Madeleine Davison made a huge but tough decision over the summer by opting to run unattached in her final high school year. She will trade high school meets for open college races. But the 3200 meter state champion and the Foot Locker Finalist has her eyes on a return trip to San Diego! She took some time to update us on her summer, including her announcement on some of the meets she will be running this fall!
How has your summer training been going? When did you start? How many miles/week? My summer training has been going well - I love running at North Park (a public park near my house) because of all the local alumni who come home for summer vacation to run with us high school kids. I started my summer training for cross country in early July. When I finished my post-season break, I was still on a family vacation in the mountains of Colorado - let’s just say my first run was breathtaking in every sense.
What meets will you be competing in this season? Which meet are you looking forward to the most and why? I am still working on finalizing my schedule for late October and early November, but so far I will most likely be running in the college race at the Harry Groves Spiked Shoe Invitational hosted by Penn State, as well as the JV race at the Notre Dame Invitational. I also plan to compete in the Footlocker Northeast Regional, and possibly one of NYRR’s community races at Van Cortlandt as a tune-up.
How will you tackle this season without having a full team to be around in training and in competition? How will you benefit from having your own schedule? What will you miss about not being on a team? I will definitely miss the camaraderie that comes with travelling to meets with a team, and training almost exclusively on my own will be a major challenge for me. However, looking for opportunities to run with my friends who are still in high school and racing in college meets with those who have already graduated will mitigate some of the loneliness. I think that having my own schedule of meets will allow me to train a little bit more consistently, and the flexibility will definitely help when it comes to scheduling college visits. I do miss my awesome teammates at NA, and these last few weeks, they often made my day by yelling “Dave‼” (short for Davison) at me whenever I ran past their meeting place at the park.
Without state meet competition, what is your main target this season? Instead of prioritizing a state title due to my decision, I’m looking at Footlocker Regionals (and hopefully Nationals) as my most important meets for the year- I hope to use this final opportunity to apply the tough lessons I learned junior year and race to my full potential.
State gold in the 3200 meters in May was your biggest win of your career. How much will that win help you push forward this year? Winning the 3200 at States was something I’ve dreamed about since seventh grade, when I first travelled to Shippensburg to watch the meet with my dad. That race helped me feel at peace with my decision to run unattached this year. Now I have new challenges to face and new goals to set, but it feels wonderful to have accomplished something that I’ve worked towards for so long.
Who do you consider to be your toughest competition this season? What makes them so tough to beat? One of the most interesting and potentially challenging things about this year is that I will be going into nearly every race with no fixed idea of who I “should” be able to keep up with, who is my main competition, or where I can reasonably expect to finish. Some of the races I’m running in are major D1 college invitationals with very tough competition, so I plan to go in with a conservative, sensible strategy and see how I fare.
Do you plan to enter Foot Locker Northeast for and go for a return trip to San Diego? Yes, I hope to compete at Regionals in November and make a run at the top 10 with the ultimate goal of redeeming myself at Balboa Park.
