Summer racing key to fall season for Rams’ Masters

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After their spring track season wraps up, most runners will lay low for the first month of the summer before resuming their training regimen.

That wasn’t the case with Bangor senior Riley Masters, who kept himself in tip-top shape over the summer by running in, and even winning, some local road races.

The training has paid off for the Rams’ cross country standout. He has enjoyed a strong season so far, with his latest effort being a third-place finish at last weekend’s Maine Cross Country Festival of Champions in Belfast in 16 minutes, 11.55 seconds over 5,000 meters.

“Road races this summer kept me in the racing mood,” Masters said. “Racing and training are two different styles of running. I feel like road races this summer helped me stay in a racing mood.”

The one major adjustment Masters has had to make this fall is that he doesn’t have former teammate Casey Quaglia, now at Binghamton University, to train with.

“It’s been tough training without Casey this year,” Masters said. “It’s always nice to have someone to run with.”

He acknowledged that his teammates are improving week in and week out while helping Masters improve at the same time.

“We’re getting there; we put in a little more miles, we should be there,” Masters said. “The guys on the team do a good job of helping me stay at the same [fitness] level.”

Like most cross country teams, the Rams are starting to tone down on speed workouts while focusing on mileage and hill workouts en route to hitting their fitness peak.

“We’re picking up miles now and endurance. Right now it’s basically miles and hills,” said Masters.

At last weekend’s Festival of Champions, Masters was in the thick of the lead pack with Lewiston’s Mohamed Noor and Ethan Shaw of Falmouth through two miles before the Blue Devils’ senior made a backbreaking move. He pulled away from Masters and Shaw, who had tried to make a move himself a mile earlier.

“Ethan is known for being an outstanding cross country runner,” Masters said. “He tried to break [Noor] with two miles to go and Mohamed was like, oh sweet we get to go faster.”

Masters has aspirations of clocking a sub-16:00 time on the runner-friendly Belfast course at the Eastern Maine regional championships while leading the Rams to a second consecutive state-meet appearance.

“We placed higher at the Festival than expected. As long as we stay focused, we should be all right,” he said. “Since the season started, coach [Ray Cooke] has told us we need to make states.”

Masters has had so much success the last couple years that friends, teammates and coaches have dubbed him “The Master of Running.”

“That was actually [indoor track] coach [Maynard] Walton last year,” Masters said when asked how the nickname was coined. “He just kind of threw it out there.”

Masters’ next challenge will be competing on two courses he has never seen before. The Rams will compete at the Mt. Blue Relays Friday afternoon in their final tuneup for the Oct. 12 KVAC Championships, run on UMaine-Augusta’s tough, hilly trails.

“I heard that’s a pretty hilly course, I don’t know how I’ll fare on that,” Masters said.

Quaglia solid for Binghamton

The aforementioned Quaglia, who won an individual Class A cross country title and, along with Masters, led Bangor to state championships in indoor and outdoor track and field – all as a senior – is enjoying a fine freshman season for Binghamton University this fall.

That hasn’t come without a few adjustments, such as adapting to rigorous 60-mile training weeks and switching from 3.1-mile to 5-mile races.

“It was a huge change,” Quaglia said of those adaptations. “It isn’t a lot for college, but for me it’s a big change,” he added, speaking of the 60-miles-per-week training regimen.

Quaglia’s biggest adjustment, however, has been all-day training sessions, which include running, lifting weights and getting necessary treatments in the training room.

“A lot of nights I’d head into the training room at 2:30 and get back to my room at 9,” he said. “I enjoy every minute of it, I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Quaglia suffered a slight injury to his lower abdominal muscle and left leg after competing at the Paul Short Invitational in Pennsylvania last weekend, which he says will keep him out until the America East championships later this month.

“It [causes] constant pain when I run,” he said.

Quaglia’s times have been solid this fall, and he finished second on the Bearcats and 18th overall at the Bearcat Invitational in Binghamton last month, clocking a 27:03 over 8,000 meters. He posted a 26:16 at the Paul Short meet last weekend, good for 153rd overall out of 260 runners.

Ryan McLaughlin can be reached at 1-800-310-8600 or bdnsports@bangordailynews.net