Orcas High School student Morgan Borman is a serious contender in competitive cross country racing. Yet there is no cross country running club on Orcas Island and no team at the high school or anywhere in the San Juans.
Borman took 67th place with a (5km) time of 17:24 in the junior national cross country championships held in Mechanicsville, Va. on Saturday, Dec. 13.
That’s an improvement over his time in nationals last year in Lawrence, Kan. where he took 112th place with a time of 18:19:68. Borman placed 13th with a time of 18.09.37 in the regional competition at Woodland Park in Seattle back in November to qualify to go to the national competition. The top 20 from each region advance to nationals. The local region includes Alaska, the Northwest, and down through Oregon. About 200 young men compete at nationals in the senior age group (17 and 18).
Borman trains with the Federal Way Track Club in Seattle. He never gets to physically train with his club – he only meets his teammates at competitions. His coach Darryl Genest sends training directions via email.
Borman is one of a kind. Anybody that meets him likes him right away. He has the biggest smile you will ever see and a huge shock of tight curly hair that he bundles up in a cutoff sweatshirt sleeve when competing. He is refreshingly candid and friendly. And he has a heart of gold. But there is a flint-hard core to Borman that drives him to work very hard and succeed both in the sports arena and academically.
He started cross country running in 2005, when he saw a race and thought it looked interesting. He initially entered races as an independent runner and had a lot of fun being around other competitive people of his own age and had fun with the racing itself. He likes the sport because it is long enough to push his endurance while still being a fast paced race. He joined the Federal Way club two years ago for the racing and training support.
He occasionally runs with a friend, but over 95 percent of the time Borman runs alone. His base training run is a four-mile loop from his home in Bonnie Brae past the airport and OPALCO and back along Crescent Beach. Sometimes he’ll run out to Cascade Lake or ride his bike out into Moran State Park and run in the park. His training runs vary from two to eleven miles and his training for a race peaks at about 40 miles per week. The competition races are five km which is about 3.1 miles. Junior cross country running has a season that runs through the fall, culminating in the national competition in December.
Borman is also on the Orcas Island crew team. Most people think it’s pretty demanding to get to Cascade Lake at 6 a.m. on a weekday morning, often in the dark and the rain or worse, and train for an hour and a half before heading back to begin the school day. Morgan tops that off by riding his bike from home at Bonnie Brae to each practice then hopping back on his bike for the ride back to school. Saturday practice he will often pump it up a notch and run to and from practice at the lake!
He isn’t committed to any single sport yet. In addition to cross country and crew, Borman is on the high school soccer team. In the past he has competed in a number of U.S. Cycling Federation sanctioned bike races. But he is committed to physical competition and has the strength of mind and body to do well in most any sport.
“Being fit means to me that I’m able to trust my body to carry me through the things I want to do. As far as winning goes, I don’t want to sound cliched but, it seems like if you have had fun, and pushed yourself then you have won, whether you place, win a medal or not. But there certainly is a desire to win if it is within my reach, and I enjoy the feeling of winning on an emotional level,” he said.
When asked what motivated him to work hard on his training, Borman said, “I feel like exercise is important to me on an immediate level, to test myself and let me know that everything is good. Also when I reach the end of a hard workout, the sense of accomplishment is it’s own reward. It feels so right to exercise that it is a great motivation by itself.”
Borman is a young man the island can be proud of. His mother Ruth Walter put it this way, “I am very proud of him, in every way. He has chosen good directions and is excelling within them. I love that he is active, intelligent, wise and kind. We all come into this life with our own unique pattern, and I am grateful to know Morgan. I enjoy who Morgan has become.”
