By Matthew Rostkowski
Rocky Hill High School Senior Bryan Martinez is continuing his running success this indoor track season after helping lead a successful cross country campaign where the terriers went 14-0.
“He came off a great cross country season, so it made it easy to ramp up his workouts and compete at a high level during indoor track,” Head coach Josh Brown said.
Martinez achieved a personal record of 4:32 in the 1600m while at the New Balance Games at the Armory in New York City.
As one of the lowest seeds going into the invitational event, he knew that he would be pushed to go fast: “My plan was just to hang onto the guys in front of me. A lot of the other runners had faster times than me going into the race, so I knew if I would be able to stick with them, then I would hit a good time.”
This was a drop of 8 seconds from his previous best at 4:40.
“He’s a tough kid and came off of some great workouts earlier, so I knew he would hit a good time. I was just surprised that he was able to drop that much in one race,” Coach Brown admitted.
Brown went on to say that consistency proved the most valuable for Martinez, acknowledging the progressive nature of the training plan: “His training has been very thorough and his performances have been built brick by brick, race by race.”
A lot of that training has an extra layer of toughness to it too, given that the team practices outside during the winter. Nonetheless, Martinez believes this prepared him well for those difficult competitions.
“The biggest challenge for me was being mentally being prepared to handle the pain, because to run those times you need to be able to just ignore it and keep going.”
Martinez is now looking forward to a big outdoor track, “I hope to run in the 4:20s [in the mile] and make State Opens. I also want to make as many memories with my teammates given that it’s the last season I’ll be running with a Rocky Hill High School jersey on.”