Alec DeLeon, a senior at Ernest Righetti High School, is a stalwart of the middle- and long-distance squads on the Warriors’ track team. He can run a mile in 4:26. His record for the 400-meter hovers slightly above 50 seconds. At the outset of his running career, however, DeLeon was not a distance runner.
“I was a sprinter for quite a while,” he said. “A couple of my friends told me to go out to distance practice, which was starting, and I was like ‘Oh, I’ll try that.’”
DeLeon took to distance running quickly, making the varsity squad his freshman year. Ed Herman, the assistant track coach at Righetti, said that DeLeon takes to the sport as if it were his job.
“He’s kind of a professional,” he said. “He’s very soft spoken but he just kind of works and systematically gets better because he puts in the time and you can tell that he really likes what he does. He’s a great teammate and a great leader. He runs cross country during the off season as well.”
DeLeon, Herman said, is a smooth runner with good form. He’s efficient and methodical, with good rhythm and clean turnover. He has good “kick”—the somewhat intangible reservoir of speed from which distance runners draw during the last leg of a race—but does not often need to use it.
When he runs, DeLeon said that his mind empties itself and he enters into a kind of fugue state.
“It’s just sort of a mindset I get into, and it just cancels out all feeling and everything,” he said. “In the long run for practice, you’re just trying to help everyone out, get everyone to push themselves. In a meet you’re not really thinking, you have to come up with some sort of strategy for the race.”
After DeLeon graduates this year, he plans to go to Allan Hancock College and run for them. Then, hopefully, he can transfer to a four-year school and run for them. Then, maybe marathons. His hope is to run until he can’t anymore.
“I’m trying to run until it has to stop,” he said. “I’ve already tried so hard that I don’t want it to just crash down and fall on me. I want it to keep going.”
Contact Staff Writer Sean McNulty at smcnulty@santamariasun.com
This article appears in Apr 9-16, 2015.