Kane County Chronicle Athlete of the Week: Francesco Benelli, Batavia, cross country, senior

Name: Francesco Benelli

School: Batavia, senior

Sport: Cross country

Why he was selected: At the First to the Finish 3A boys race at Detweiller Park in Peoria, Benelli was 11th out of 386 runners after crossing the line in a personal-best time of 15:02.70 to lead the Bulldogs to seventh place out of 45 teams.

Benelli was selected the Kane County Chronicle Athlete of the Week in an online vote.

Here is his Q&A with sports reporter Joel Boenitz.

How did you feel about your performance after improving 33 places and dropping 27 seconds off your performance last year?

Benelli: I definitely feel pretty good about it. I had a lot of expectations going into it because of how well I progressed last track season, so I just knew that it was going to be faster this year. I executed the plan exactly as I wanted to, which was to have a conservative start because it was really hot that day, so I just had to make sure that I was racing smart and not dying at the end. Also, I’ve been sick for the beginning of the season for about the first month or so with COVID, so I’m just rebuilding now, and it was a good confidence booster.

What was the feeling of getting a personal-best time in just your second race of the season?

Benelli: It felt very reassuring that I’m doing the right thing for all my practices and the mentality that we have with our team, it’s looking pretty good. It also showed me that even through sickness I’m still able to do well.

Your times have dropped dramatically since your sophomore season, dropping nearly 30 seconds off your average in each of the past two seasons. What would you attribute to that success?

Benelli: Definitely just consistency with my training. We’ve been incorporating a lot of tempo work, which has just helped a ton. At the beginning of the season, I’ll do 800-meter repeats at a certain pace and then maybe two weeks later, I’ll start doing kilometer repeats and then mile repeats. We kind of increase the volume and increase the pace as well as we get more comfortable with these paces and then at the end we like doing race pace work. So I think we’ve really kind of got like a system down for workouts and it’s proving really helpful.

You helped the team finish seventh overall out of 45 teams. After making it to state as a team for the first time (last year), what’s the camaraderie like on the team?

Benelli: It’s been awesome. We’ve been running a lot of workouts in more concise groups. Before we did one big pack, and now we’ve been able to split it up where some faster guys are running together and then we have one big pack. So our one through four runners are looking pretty solid right now, and we have our second runner, Eddie Polaski, is actually looking really well. He just progressed amazingly. So it’s just more of that five runner that we’re trying to figure out right now. There’s a lot of guys who can fight for that spot, which is good.

Do you have any superstitions that you do prior to a race?

Benelli: I would say, if there’s one, it would be just hydrating. I like to never risk it because anything can happen in cross country like it being super hot. So I had a rough time with with cramps before, and that’s the last thing you want to end your race. So just getting in my electrolytes and drinking water is mainly my superstition.