Welcome to the world of cross-country running. It's familiar, yet different.
Most of us are familiar with running in competition, mostly in the form of events on a track (hence, track and field). A group of runners line up together, go a particular distance, and find out which one is the fastest. Conditions usually are ideal for running in terms of elevation, with flat surfaces and no elevation.
Cross country is a different animal. It comes from a childhood game in England in the middle of the 19th century, as kids would run through the countryside chasing their friends. Conditions in the current incarnation of the sport are often not ideal, since hills are expected and surfaces can vary. I once saw a 5-kilometer race held in a park that had a layer of snow on the grass in a sub-freezing temperature, which meant it didn't take much for the course to become a sea of mud. Guys turned up at the finish line crying. You wouldn't believe how many shoes got left behind on turns.
Cross-country events usually are staged in the fall while their track counterparts go in the spring. There are no formal NCAA championships in XC, the usual abbreviation. It's not in the Olympics, either. Cross country isn't associated with big crowds; usually it's family, friends, and runners past and present watching.
Sean Brosnan takes us into the world of high school cross country in his book, "Beyond Fast." It's the story of how, in automotive terms, he took a team from 0 to 100 almost overnight.
Brosnan had more or less wandered through life until he arrived at Newbury Park High School in 2016. He had been a very good runner, but not quite good enough to challenge for national fame and glory. Brosnan loved running through, and he bounced around the country looking for information and the chance to interact with the best in the business. Eventually, he landed at a high school that had been decidedly mediocre. It hadn't reached the state finals in California cross country in about a quarter of a century.
He promised he'd change all that right from Day One, and then went about the business of doing it. There was plenty of work involved, as there always is with running. But the athletes bought in, and - sure enough - some success followed. Suddenly it was cool to be a runner, and Newbury Park got better and better. Good runners became relatively great runners, and the rest of the group was inspired to try to keep up as best as it could. One of those runners was an Olympian in 2024, and the team won three straight unofficial high school national championships - breaking records for scholastic athletes along the way. Brosnan does something of a play-by-play about how it all happened.
The book generates one key thought along the way. Go to any area in the country, and you'll find a school and a program that is something of a dynasty in something. There's a good coach behind it in most cases, but it's tough to know how much credit to give him or her. After all, the athletes are the ones doing the work. Almost certainly, success breeds success in high school sports. It's cool to be on a state champion, and the younger kids who are top athletes might pick that sport over a less successful one.
From there, Brosnan obviously needed a little help for his methods to succeed. The proper attitude and support from parents and athletes are necessary. When Brosnan decided to take his team to a higher elevation for training during four weeks of summer vacation, the runners had to be willing to do it and their parents had to be on board financially (as well willing to do some driving to see their kids every so often). It sounds like Newbury Park is in a reasonably wealthy area, and that must have helped. But some family vacations and summer jobs might have been sacrificed. This might have been a perfect spot for Brosnan to try out his methods. The coach pounded the message that his runners could be great if they did the work, and many wound up that way by any standard.
Along the way in those championship years, Brosnan had to deal with Covid-19 for a couple of them. Even in a sport involving somewhat solitary runners, the coach's drive for excellence may have bent (but not broken) the rules just a little bit. He certainly fought for his athletes with administrators and sanctioning groups along the way.
Brosnan teamed up with Chris Lear and Andrew Grief for the writing of this book. It's a straight-forward account of the rise of the Newbury Park program and of his life, which is far from conventional. Some of the runners themselves even have the chance to express their stories along the way, which is a nice touch.
The story that's printed ends in 2022, when Brosnan decided to leave high school coaching to take a similar job at UCLA. But this book is coming out in 2025, so what happened in the meantime? Brosnan only lasted a year coaching the Bruins' distance runners before UCLA fired him. He has said he believes he was fired because there were allegations that he tampered with runners from other schools before they entered the transfer portal. It's tough to tell about what happened there; this isn't the Alabama football program when it comes to media scrutiny. There's no sign that Brosnan has landed a full-time coaching job in the two years since his departure from Westwood. That's all a little disquieting from a distance.
"Beyond Fast" ought to interest those who have a strong connection with cross country, particularly at the high school level. It's always good to read about how championship teams come together. More casual readers, though, might get a little bogged down at the description of training schedules and races. In other words, the book falls into a very cozy niche without room for most.
Three stars
Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualified purchases.)
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