Mountain View High School senior Ryan Andrus is on summer vacation with his family. He's just spent eight hours driving in a car and is now somewhere in the middle of Colorado.
It's windy and raining and the last thing he wants to do now is run. He'd hand over his wallet right now if he could only crash on motel room bed.It's the summer between his junior and senior year. It's vacation time for high school students - time to sleep in and take it easy. There's some making up to do for nine months of rising before the sun each morning to get to first period on time.
In order of things Andrus wants to do, lacing up his shoes and going running ranks somewhere between going to the dentist for dental work without novocaine and taking the SAT test.
But Andrus straps on his shoes, grabs his younger brother Brett and the two go running.
It's nights like this that have paid off for Ryan Andrus. "My attitude is if I sleep in once it probably won't hurt me, but it's the attitude that I can sleep in that will hurt me," Andrus says.
Andrus is now the best cross country runner in the state and is the key to the Bruins' rise to national prominence in boys cross country.
Andrus will be one of several high school runners participating in the Western Regional cross country meet in Fresno, California on Saturday, Dec. 7. The top eight in the regional meet earn the right to race in the national meet the follwing week.
Considering his past performances, Andrus figures to have a good chance to win the meet. "We have a dream team in our trophy case that has our top 25 kids that have ever run at Mountain View," said Bruin coach Dave Houle. "There's been some great kids who have been record holders that have run for us, but Ryan is at the top of the list. He's not only a good runner, he's a great person. He's humble, he's an honor student and he was academic all-state."
So far Andrus' senior season has been spectacular. He won the Vale (Oregon) invitational in early September that featured over 150 runners from eight different states.
Three weeks later, he won the Murray invitational and followed up that win with a first-place finish at the Vulcan Classic invitational in Birmingham, Ala., on Oct. 5, where he not only won the race but smashed the old course record. Andrus' time of 14:47 was 10 seconds better than the time of Sharif Karie of West Virgina, who was considered to be the top runner in the country last year.
As a sophomore at Mountain View, it was clear Andrus was a rising star. He finished seventh at the state cross country meet. As a junior he reached the track at Highland High School with the lead in the 5A meet, but faded down the stretch and finished ninth.
"I think he wanted to prove to everyone he was better than that. To settle for ninth was real hard on him. He spent a year training trying to prove it," Houle explained.
This year Andrus received his redemption. He won the state 5A cross country meet on Oct. 30 with a state-record time of 14:52.
It's easy to understand how someone gets interested in cross country at Mountain View. The program has over 100 runners in it and is the top (including boys and girls) overall program in the country. Both the boys and girls teams have been ranked in the top five nationally this year.
Andrus began to run in the seventh grade and as a freshman he was running on Mountain View's varsity team. For the last two years, Andrus typically runs six days a week from 50 to 65 miles a week. He takes just two weeks off a year (the week after cross country and the week after track).
After his senior year, Andrus says he plans on running in college but has yet to decide where he's going.
"Any university that knows anything about cross country is after him. I get floods of letters every day about him," Houle said.
Andrus says he'll make his decision in April. But for now he will go about his training each day knowing the long runs and many miles have added up to make him the top runner Mountain View has ever had.
It's a thought that serves as a little extra motivation just in case he ever thinks about sleeping in.