Marquette men’s cross country has been led by the young one-two punch of sophomore Logan Goodman and first-year Edgar Valles this season.
In the team’s five meets this fall, Goodman has paced the team three times, most recently in the Big East Championships on Nov. 1, and Valles has finished first among the Golden Eagles in the other two meets.
Despite Valles only being 17 years old, associate head coach Jack Hackett has said that he has trained at a high level and solidified his presence as a team leader in his first season.
“A lot of the team ends up cueing off him for some of these workouts,” Hackett said. “I think that’s a kind of a unique situation to have a kid that’s not even 18 yet be one of the best runners on the team.
“It’s an exciting thing to watch because he’s a very capable runner, the team enjoys having him around, he’s a good presence, a lot of fun, he backs it up by racing and training hard too.”
Goodman first talked to Valles once he committed to Marquette and continued to stay in contact with him over the summer. They bonded over training in elevated environments with Valles hailing from El Paso, Texas, and Goodman being raised in Erie, Colorado.
“Every week, we’re pushing each other to the max, especially in races; it has been so great to have a teammate right next to me going through it, and it really pushes me to be better,” Goodman said. “I’m sure that pushes him to be better as well; we’ve been working together to improve and bring each other up.”
To ease his transition to collegiate running, Valles showcased his drive through summer workouts when the program was in a state of coaching flux, with Hackett not being installed until late July.
“I did something we called ‘double threshold’ for most of the summer,” Valles said. “There’s two days in which I trained twice a day, two workouts a day, where you’re not going so fast that you’re exhausted at the end of the workout, you’re going what we call ‘tempo’ pacing, which is 20 seconds slower than race pace.
“I did that for a lot of the summer, and it got me really fit.”
Valles and Goodman have made it a point to partake in workouts together and maintain a close pacing with each other on the racecourse to continually get the best out of each other.
“We talk to each other [about] what paces we want to hit; if one of us is falling behind, we have to keep pace,” Valles said. “During races, if he’s in front of me, or I’m in front of him, we seek each other out, try to stay together as much as possible, for the most part, I think we’ve been pretty good at that.”
The Golden Eagles finished in last at the Big East Championships, but with the majority of the team being lower-level students, Goodman said that growing together whilst retaining a core group over multiple seasons will pay dividends down the line.
“Going through this experience together with the coaching change, this season especially,” Goodman said. “I think this will bond us together and push us to be better every single year.”
This article was written by Mikey Severson. He can be reached at michael.severson@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @MikeySeversonMU.