 | Having distanced himself from the pack in Massachusetts, Mark Amirault will further his running career next year at Princeton. Tim Llewellyn/RISE |
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By Matt Remsberg, Special to SI.com, RISE
Few specators at last fall's Division 1 EMass boys' cross country meet were surprised when Mark Amirault crossed the finish line in first place. During the previous three years, the Xaverian senior had established himself as the state's premier distance runner and entered the race as the defending EMass and All-State champion. In fact, eyebrows would have been raised if Amirault hadn't won.
But to Xaverian coach Bryan Dunn, the result was a miracle.
After missing five weeks of action with injuries to both knees, Amirault returned to practice for just a pair of 15-minute training sessions two days before the meet. Despite those gimpy knees and a complete lack of preparation, Amirault sailed through the Franklin Park course in 15:47 to win comfortably.
"It was the most impressive running performance I've ever seen," says Dunn, who was an elite runner at Virginia's William & Mary in the mid-1990s and has seen his share of great performances. "He could barely walk earlier in the week, but he put his talent and heart on display that day. He was digging as deep as he could."
It may have been the hardest Amirault ever had to work to win a race, but it was hardly the first time the distance specialist had crossed the finish line in first place. Entering this winter's indoor track season, the 5-foot-10, 140-pound Princeton recruit had won four Division 1 EMass titles and three Division 1 state titles between cross country and track. He has also fared well at national events like the Nike Outdoor Nationals, Penn Relays and Millrose Games, where he finished second in the high school mile last year.
Amirault's triumph this past fall was something special, but Dunn could have showered his star pupil with nearly the same praise a year earlier.
As a junior, Amirault entered the EMass and All-State cross country meets as the favorite but wasn't feeling very good about his performances during the weeks leading up to the events. He was struggling to recover from training sessions, and distances that should have been a breeze were becoming increasingly difficult.
Dunn suggested that Amirault take a blood test to check for mono and other issues, and that's when doctors discovered he was anemic. Because of a lack of iron in his blood, less oxygen than normal was being carried to his lungs, making it hard for him to run long distances.
According to Dunn, healthy runners generally have a serum ferritin level (a measurement proportional to the amount of iron in blood) of 60 to 80. Amirault was at seven. He immediately began taking iron supplements and got his serum ferritin level up to about 20 by the time the postseason meets rolled around. Amirault then gutted out victories at the EMass and All-State meets.
"That's when Mark really showed me what he was made of," Dunn says. "Some people have talent and some people have heart. But when you put the two together, it's amazing what can happen."
Making that success even more amazing is the fact that Amirault didn't take up running until the summer before his freshman year -- and even then he took up the sport as a way to stay in shape for lacrosse season. After the first few practices, however, Amirault knew he had a special talent. With barely any formal training, he was able to keep pace with the varsity runners and even felt he was slowing himself down in an effort not to show up his older teammates.
"I was a little intimidated at first," says Amirault, who ended up never playing lacrosse at Xaverian and instead joined the track team as a freshman. "Then one day I came home from practice and realized there was no sense in holding myself back. Ever since then, I've gone all out all the time."
Amirault has truly lived by those words. Whether competing in a dual meet or a national competition, he always aims to be a factor in each race. Most of the time, the result is victory. The rest of the time, the result is at least memorable.
"You don't train year-round just to go out and aim for third because you think there's a couple guys in the race that are better than you," Amirault says. "I go into every race with a plan to win. Maybe it costs me a few spots because I go out too hard in the beginning, but at least I'm a factor."
Amirault put that philosophy to the test for the first time during the spring of his sophomore year. At that point, Newton North's Chris Barnicle was the talk of the town. He was a senior All-American destined for Arkansas, one of the nation's top track schools, and he specialized in the same event as Amirault -- the two-mile.
It would have been understandable if Amirault had conceded first place to Barnicle and gone for second when the two met at the All-State meet, but he chose to challenge the senior for the title. The two ran stride for stride for the first 1.5 miles until Amirault hit the wall and faded to fourth. Despite the finish, he made Barnicle sweat and was certainly a factor in the race.
A little more than a year later, Amirault was at it again. After winning All-State titles in the indoor mile and outdoor 2-mile as a junior, he participated in the two-mile at the Nike Outdoor Nationals last summer. Amirault finished ninth after taking an early lead and would have likely finished a few spots higher if he hadn't used so much energy in the first part of the race. But like always, he was racing to win.
"I think after that race, Mark may have been a little down about his finish," Dunn says. "But it was all validated by the fact that a couple college coaches said to me afterward, 'We loved the fact that he went after it.'"
Sometimes that philosophy works, sometimes it doesn't. But Amirault wouldn't have it any other way.
