Always pushing - Seymour Tribune

April 9, 2015

For The Tribune

High school athletes enjoy distance running for different reasons.

For Seymour’s Macey Warren, it’s therapeutic.

“Running is kind of a relaxer for me,” Warren said. “It keeps the stress away. I also heard from one of my good family friends, Delaney (Sunbury) that she really enjoyed cross-country so I decided to join, and I heard that Spencer (Sunbury) was a good coach, and he definitely is, and I’m glad I joined.”

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Warren ran cross-country for three years, and is in her second season as a member of the track team.

Last spring she ran the 800 and mile and was a member of the 3,200 relay team that qualified for the regional.

This season, Warren wants to concentrate on the mile.

“The mile is my favorite event,” Warren said. “The first and second laps you have to have a consistent pace, but the third is when you really have to start picking it up, and the fourth is when you really need to run hard.”

While it may not seem evident to the casual eye, much strategy goes into running the mile.

“I think I have a better mentality for (the mile) because in cross-country we run three miles, so the mile isn’t that hard for me,” Warren said. “I just want to do the best I can in the mile.”

The senior said since the team has a lot of depth, the coaching staff is in the process of working on a lineup.

“We’re still trying to see who fits where,” Warren said. “We have different workouts. We have tempo runs where I figure out where my pace is at, and where I can go and things like that. We also go hard for a 400, and then you have a rest 400 and that kind of gets you in the mentality for a race, and ‘this is where I need to be.’”

Cross-country became a passion for Warren over the years.

“I was in the top-10 (last fall),” Warren said. “I was back-and-forth (in and out of the top 7) I got to run in the regional. Then I was taking the SAT during the semistate.”

The 5K races taught Warren more about herself.

“It is definitely a sport that you can individually do well, but an individual can also help the entire teams’ effort,” Warren said. “We all got along really well, and Spencer was a great coach, and it definitely helped me build my character, and it helped me with my high school career needing more discipline.”

Warren said you definitely have to have positive outlook on being able to run a cross-country race.

“You have to have the right mentality for it,” she said. “You have to be mentally tough in order to run cross-country. I think cross-country, basically, is all mental because if you give up and you tell yourself you can’t do it any more, than you’re not going to be able to. You have to have that mindset that ‘I will do it,’ and ‘I can push through this mile.’

“You want your first mile to be at a good pace so that you know how to pace yourself for the rest of the race. I think the third mile is definitely the more crucial mile.”

Warren’s career-best time was 21:23 on the courses.

“I basically just set goals for myself and knew this is the time I wanted to run the first mile,” Warren said. “If I saw a girl from a school, who had beaten me two weeks before, my goal this race was to catch up to her and try to beat her.”

For Warren, mental preparation and toughness is a key to success.

“I think you have to be skilled, obviously, to do a sport, but I think the mental is almost more so than the skill because if you know that you can’t do it, then you’re not going to, but if you can, then that’s a key highlight and you have to have that built in your head that you can do it,” Warren said. “You have to keep pushing yourself.”

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Parents: Walt and Jan Warren

Siblings: Payton

Sports: track 2 years, cross country 3 years, tennis 2 years, volleyball 1 year

Athletic highlights: track- 2014 team sectional champions, 3200 relay sectional champions, tennis- sectional champions 2012, 2013

Organizations: National Honor Society, Student Government, 4-H, dance marathon committee

Plans after high school: Attend Purdue University, study business or communications

Attending SHS: “It definitely helps that you have dual-credit classes and I’ve taken advantage of that.

“I’ve met some of the best friends through sports, and that has definitely been important to me, the relationships. I think sports helped me become a disciplined person and helped me with time management and things like that. That definitely helped me grow throughout my high school career.”

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