Mental toughness and a drive to hammer out miles are just two of many a runner must possess to be successful.
When Chris Peverada arrived on the Eastern Maine cross country scene as a Hampden Academy freshman in 2001, he was a junior varsity runner trying to carve his name into the program.
He steadily improved year after year — logging 400 miles of summer running prior to his junior season and a whopping 500 leading up to his senior campaign — which led to a successful final two years with the Broncos and a strong college career at the University of Chicago.
That foundation has translated into a success in marathoning. Peverada, now a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, splashed onto the long-distance scene in a big way this fall, running an impressive 2 hours, 26 minutes, 23 seconds at the Chicago Marathon in October.
That effort led to a 57th-place finish among 33,701 runners who completed the race.
Peverada’s coaches are the first to admit that while he isn’t blessed with blinding speed, his work ethic is second to none.
“He was able to handle long runs better than most of the [other] runners and he definitely had the work ethic,” said longtime Hampden Academy cross country coach Dick Balentine, a veteran of eight marathons, including a 2:46 in the 1983 Boston Marathon.
“We’ve had some really exceptional athletes here, [Division III] national champions and what not, but there’s nobody that’s ever walked through these doors in the nine years that I’ve been at Chicago that has worked harder than Chris,” said University of Chicago track and cross country coach Chris Hall.
Pounding a lot of pavement
Peverada’s sophomore year at Hampden, 2002-03, the Broncos had a talented distance team, led by then-senior Brian Herasymchuck, who was the Eastern Maine Indoor Track League’s top performer that year.
Knowing he had a chance to be a key contributor to Hampden’s cross country and track and field teams, Peverada hit the road early and often in the summer of 2003, eyeing a coveted varsity spot.
“I kind of decided I wanted to be on varsity and be one of the top runners,” Peverada said. “I just kept running a little more than usual and just kind of saw how running more helped me become better.”
It turns out his team became more formidable along with him, as Peverada helped lead the Broncos to an Eastern Maine Class B cross country championship his senior year, 2004.
That was quite a progression from his freshman year, when Peverada didn’t exactly resemble a long-distance runner.
“His freshman year, you never would’ve guessed he’d been the runner he is today,” Balentine said. “He wasn’t a very athletic kid, I don’t think he had done much athletically. I see him now [running] around town, he’s very athletic-looking, a totally different person.”
Peverada’s athletic accomplishments led him to attend the University of Chicago, a University Athletic Association school.
A similar start
The beginning of Peverada’s college career mirrored that of his high school days — struggling to make the varsity.
“His freshman year, he wasn’t in a position to be a scoring member of our team. We had to trim rosters to go to meets [and] he generally wasn’t making those cuts,” Hall said.
But that only fueled Peverada’s determination.
“He just worked hard. I remember some of the veterans on our team talking about Chris on occasion, killing himself out there every day, one of those guys who forced other people to get better,” said Hall.
Peverada got better every season, and was a second-team All-UAA selection in 2008 as a senior.
One thing was definitely clear throughout his career at Chicago: Peverada’s specialties were the longer races, so the 8K (5-mile) collegiate cross country distance proved to be no big adjustment from the high school 5K (3.1) while Peverada focused on the 5K and 10K on the track.
“That was a bit of an adjustment but I guess one that I was happy to make based on my training history,” said the soft-spoken Peverada. “The first summer [prior to college] I did 70-80 miles per week, which is a lot more than I had done in high school. Then when I got to campus and we started doing workouts with the team, the workouts were, I guess you could say, similar workouts in basic structure [but with] a lot higher volume and higher intensity.”
Peverada, who majored in linguistics and minored in physics at Chicago before graduating last spring and moving on to graduate school, started his marathon training shortly after graduation.
“When I started doing the marathon training I was kind of my own coach at that point,” he said. “I kind of picked the workouts that I enjoyed.”
Among them were back-to-back long-run days and repetition workouts that consisted of four 5K reps or two 10K reps.
That, coupled with Peverada’s desire to run long distances, made his preparation for Chicago, run on Oct. 11, easier.
Continuing success
Temperatures in the Windy City on Oct. 11 were fairly chilly — with the mercury hovering around 33 degrees at 7:30 a.m. — and 34,792 participants, including a 22-year-old from Hampden, Maine, standing in Grant Park, ready to race.
Times were extremely fast that day — with race winner Sammy Winjiru of Kenya recording the fastest time at the 26.2-mile distance on American soil at 2:05:41 — but Peverada didn’t expect to see what he saw when he crossed the finish line.
“I expected something around a 2:27-2:28 maybe,” he said. “It was a little better than I expected.”
Even better, a number of his former teammates turned out along the course for support.
“The current Chicago guys were there on the sidelines cheering [me] on, so that was nice, and my family came, which was fun, too,” Peverada said.
Peverada, who said he felt strong throughout the race, eclipsed not just his own expectations but even that of his coaches.
“I thought he had what it took to be successful, I’m not sure if I thought he could run 2:26 in a marathon,” Balentine said. “It didn’t surprise me that he kept on improving at Chicago but running a 2:26 is just humble. He’s taken another leap forward.”
Hall, however, was not surprised Peverada took on marathoning right after college.
“He talked about it in college. I pictured Chris as one of those guys 30 years from now who has run every marathon in the U.S. or something like that,” Hall said. “I just don’t see him stopping.”
Hall also coaches Peverada’s sister, Molly, who is a junior at Chicago. The siblings were teammates for a couple of seasons.
“She’s got a very similar work ethic,” Hall said.
Chris Peverada, who is enjoying some down time in training before the holidays, during which he’ll come home to Hampden and possibly run the Epic Finale 5K race in Bangor on Dec. 27, will next tackle 26.2 miles in May at the Cleveland Marathon.
No matter what running challenges Peverada embraces in the future, it’s clear that his passion for the sport will always stick with him.
“I guess if I didn’t like running it would be hard to get up [early and run] before class, especially in the winter when you get up that early and it’s still dark out,” he said.
