“My coach told my dad at the start of the track season that I was going to run 9:40 and go to States,” says junior Jack Shannon of his sophomore track season at St. Charles.  “When I heard that, I thought how the heck am I going to do that?”  Proving to be as much a fortuneteller as a coach, track coach Alan Hostetler must have been both proud and satisfied when Jack ran 9:42 at the Regional Championships to qualify for the state meet in the 3200m.  “It was beyond my expectations,” Jack says of the sudden rise in the ranks of central Ohio’s elite.  Only a year earlier, he’d seen his freshman season end at the District track meet where he’d finished outside of the scoring and far from qualifying for the next week’s regional.  The incredible rise in just one year has been a breakthrough that Jack has worked towards all along.
            “I knew it was going to happen,” Jack says of the leap in improvement.  Workouts with the St. Charles team prepped him for a strong sophomore cross country season, but then the team fell painfully short of a berth in the XC state meet.  Though Jack lowered his 5k best to 16:47, the state meet still remained an unfulfilled goal and fuel for the fire.  “I then took a few months off and started back up the first of January,” he says. 

Jack rolls through the laps at the '06 State Track Meet in the two mile.

 At St. Charles, the team competes in the indoor track season, and the extra race experiences paid off for Jack in a big way. 
            Struggling shortly to get his racing legs back under him, Jack soon got on a roll.  “I started dropping times like crazy,” he says of the indoor campaign.  “I’d drop 10, 20 seconds a race.”  The culmination of all the running behind him led to his first state meet qualification, as he punched his ticket to the championship meet in the indoor 3200m.  “I was pretty pumped to get to indoor States,” he says of the race where he finished 12^th.             

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           For the Shannons, running “runs” in the family.  “Growing up, I had heard many stories from my dad about his running days,” Jack says.  “It always seemed like fun to me to be able to win a race and compete with others.  I started track in the sixth grade.  I did not do cross country because my school did not have a team.”  After sitting out his seventh grade season, he returned to the sport in eighth grade.  “Although I was not a phenomenal runner in middle school, I enjoyed it.  My best time eight grade for the mile was a 5:46.”
            As he’s gotten more involved in the sport, Jack has taken his running beyond just the everyday practices and meets.  “I’m on J.J. Huddle and Baumspage.com every Saturday, all day, just looking to see who’s injured, who’s running well, things like that.”  A competitor to the core, Jack takes great notice of the competition.  “I only started biking when my dad read an article in the paper about Ben Engelhardt competing in duathlons,” he admits.  Another runner he has looked to is Thomas Worthington alum Chris Thurber.  “He looked so strong, like a machine and just pounded away for 3.1 miles,” Jack says of the local stand-out from his freshman year.  “Another hero of mine is a former teammate, Steve Coppel, who (as a senior) took me (as a freshman) under his wing and helped me to get better.”  Just as Jack has taken notice of many of the other top runners and strong examples in the region, it’s only a matter of time before others begin looking up to Jack in a similar manner.  Maybe, someday, his own son can take some encouragement from stories of state meets and close races and turn that into a motivation of his own to reach the top.

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In the midst of a breakthrough season, a runner builds momentum and smashes through previously insurmountable barriers.  Times drop and confidence soars.  The breakthrough season is the dream of every hardworking runner, the ultimate reward for the endless repeats and extra miles.  For Jack, when the outdoor post-season rolled along, the effort of all his training left him with a peculiar feeling on race day.  At the District Championships, while racing in the 3200m again, he qualified for the next week of racing with ease.  “I thought that was my breakthrough,” he says.  “It felt effortless.”  Then, the next week, he fulfilled his coach’s predictions of him in placing a strong second with a big PR.  “After I crossed that finish line, I was in a state of shock, all my hard work paid off.  So far, that race has been the race of my life.”  And with that, he was off to his second state meet.  “A bunch of the cross country guys came down to watch,” he says of his state meet run at OSU’s Jesse Owens Track.  Improving a place from his indoor run, Jack notched an 11^th place finish, tops amongst all freshmen and sophomores in the state.
         With the lessons of the successful 2006 track season behind him, Jack began his junior cross country season with a win at the Eagle Invitational at New Albany.  “I’m off to a pretty good start,” he says of the 17:07 5k win.  The important meets of the cross country season are still over a month away, so he’s mostly just training hard for now.  “I’m putting in a bunch of miles,” he says of the base work he and the other members of the St. Charles team are still putting in.  “I took a month off after track…I had sinus surgery this summer, so I haven’t been running that long yet.”  The team is fully focused on a strong post-season, and Jack hopes to help lead the way with the help of a lineup of teammates.  “Having the 1-2-3 punch of me, Corey Morgan, and Ben Hanf will hopefully lead us on to win the CCL Championships and beat what will be a tough DeSales team.”  The DeSales-St. Charles rivalry runs deep, and their meets take on almost as much importance as the state tournament.  Beyond the league meet, the St. Charles harriers “will then hopefully make it to States as a team and maybe even have a few guys in the top sixteen at Regionals,” Jack plans.  The only thing left to do is put the training in that will prepare them, and then to go to the starting line.  “When our team runs out to do the prayer right before we race, that is when I know its time to race,” Jack says.          
       Having shown that he has what it takes to run with anyone in the region, consistently improving and making a name for himself as a runner, Jack is a runner to watch as the 2006 season builds towards its peak.  In order to build upon a breakthrough, a runner has to look within and find continued motivation. 

The Columbus Running Company wishes Jack & the guys at St. Charles the best of luck as the season continues.

Right: Jack sludges through the mud at last year's district championship.

 

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