Mareno playing catch up as the NC state meet looms

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

There isn’t a lot left for Nevada Mareno to prove as a high school runner.

The senior from Leesville Road NC will enter the North Carolina state championship meet this weekend as a huge favorite to repeat as the Class 4A state champion. She won her regional meet by running 17:15.6 and winning by 86 seconds.

She was third at Foot Locker Nationals last December and a star during track season, where she ran 2:08.51 in the 800, 4:43.39 in the mile and 10:00.44 in the 2-mile.

But the fall of her senior year has been a bit uneven. Her college choice weighed on her. She missed a bit of training due to illness.

“I would say (the season) has definitely been up and down, a few times,” Mareno said.

Last year, Mareno felt like her fitness peaked too early. She was running fantastic times in October and felt tired by the time she reached San Diego.

She also had Weini Kelati to contend with. The Eritrean immigrant who ran for two seasons at Heritage HS in Virginia motivated Mareno because she knew that facing Kelati at Foot Locker South, Foot Locker nationals, and on the track, presented a big challenge.

Kelati, two years older, beat Mareno in epic races in both cross country and on the track at New Balance Nationals Outdoor (10:00.38 to 10:00.44 in the 2-mile).

“Honestly, I was so grateful that I was able to actually compete against her,” Mareno said. “I always had the motivation to say ‘She beat me last time.’ It caused me to put more thought into my training.”

Mareno knows that next spring she could have epic battles with Virginian Kate Murphy, but for this cross country season the North Carolina star is still trying to find herself.

The college choice is out of the way. Mareno picked Stanford over Oregon after going back and forth with her decision for weeks.

Her college recruitment process may include a lasting memory for the weekend she spent at North Carolina State in the midst of a hurricane. Mareno took her official visit to N.C. State, which is just a few miles from her home, on Oct. 8 as Hurricane Matthew was strafing Georgia and the Carolinas.

“The dorm I was staying in … the whole thing was without power for 72 hours,” Mareno said. “They moved me to the only hotel in the city that still had power.”

The campus trails were flooded. A visit to the football game (against Notre Dame) was bypassed because of the torrential rain.

The visit went fine, but it was definitely not an ideal situation.

Mareno’s outlook on the season feels about the same. It’s going fine, but not ideal.

Instead of peaking too early, like 2015, she wonders if she is too far behind.

Meets like Saturday’s state finals are important gauges as she assesses her chances to compete well at Foot Locker in December.

As fast as she ran on Saturday at her regional meet, it was still almost 30 seconds slower than she ran last year.

But in 2015, Mareno was nearing her peak by this point of the season. In 2016, she is rallying to peak a little later.

“We’ll find out a lot in the next few weeks,” she said.