When asked about what cross country is, Mr. Weidele said it is “like a scaled down marathon. You’re not running short distances in cross country, you’re running miles so it’s not like sprinting in a track, you’re running in all terrain like on rocks, on grass, uphill and downhill, your doing miles on end.”
So for 5k athletes are doing a little over 3 miles, a 10k is about 6 miles, and if you’re doing a half marathon, you’re doing just over 13 miles. A full marathon is 26 miles. There are even some ultra marathons out there that are 200 miles non stop. But that’s not what cross country is at the high school.
Weidele started coaching it in the fall of 2016.
“It’s fun,” Weidele said. “When I was in college, I was done playing baseball and I used cross country to get back in shape and I did a lot of long distance running. I did a lot of benefits walks and runs and I started running 5ks when I was in college. I didn’t really do it in high school but once I was teaching I was offered the job based on those experiences and I became the head coach.”
Running is good for your mental health. It’s not just all about your physical health and your cardio workout.
Iselin Middle School won some township titles for boys and girls cross country teams. But it’s been a while at JFK since winning a division, county or state title.
When asked about deciding to take the cross country job, Weidele said that it picked him.
“Actually cross country picked me,” Weidele said. “The athletic director of JFK came up to me when I was coaching track at that time and thought that I would be a good fit for cross country. I interviewed for the job and Mr. Cilento, the former JFK principal, hired me.”
Coaching it is different than running himself because it was one thing to go out and run. It’s another to explain to kids how they should go out to run. It was a little tough just trying to make workouts that were helpful and not overdo it which could hurt the athletes. Workouts have to made sense based on the skill set of the runners.
