In his first cross country meet of the season, Russell Reed placed second overall at Coastal Carolina, finishing the 5K in 16:10 and earning Big South Runner of the Week honors.
Yet his performance still disappointed him.
“The opening was kind of disappointing,” said Reed, who was feeling sick the day of the race. “To actually win a college race would have been a great season and to be beat…it’s just kind of frustrating.”
Three meets into his senior season, the Longwood men’s cross country captain has been his team’s frontrunner in every single one of them.
Last year, Reed set the Longwood cross country 5K record, finishing in 15:55—meaning he ran just a few seconds over 5 minutes per mile.
“You don’t think about how much this is going to suck, you just think I’m going to do something great,” said Reed.
Despite not running his first year at Longwood due to injury, Reed holds a spot in the top 10 of all Longwood cross country distance records he has run in, including the 8K and 10K sections.
“I would like to graduate with all three (records). That would be one hell of a feeling,” said Reed
For Reed, when he first entered college, cross country was something relatively new for the 6’0” athlete.
Prior to high school, Reed was never exposed to the world of cross country.
Growing up in the small town of Onemo, Virginia, a town off of the Chesapeake Bay with a population of 303 in 2014, he considered running more a means of transportation than a competition, a way to travel from here to there.
“I grew up in a small town… everything was within two miles of where we lived and so I got tired of walking, I just started running places,” said Reed. “Then I started to love it, I started to enter races and doing well, and it just went from there.”
Wrestling ruled Reed’s life from a young age all the way until he chose to follow cross country to Longwood. Reed was All-State while wrestling in high school.
As a wrestler, there was something about the aggressive physical struggle of the sport Reed enjoyed.
As a runner, Reed pushes through the mental difficulties to succeed and stride past the finish line with a runner’s high.
“It’s an ability you have that most people don’t,” said Reed. “Setting a goal, running your own race and when you get to the point in the race where you’re really suffering, you have to be able to have a competitive drive with yourself or others to get beyond that.”
Reed felt there was “nothing comparable” to reaching the final stretch of a race.
“People will literally black out and run into trees,” said Reed.
During his five years at Longwood, Reed has also dealt with any potential difficulties that come along with balancing school and his sport as a student-athlete. He has earned scholar-athlete honors for the past four years, maintaining a GPA over 3.0 in all eight semesters so far.
His second year saw him appear on Longwood’s All-Academic team and make the Big South’s Presidential Honor Roll list.
Reed majors in anthropology and triple minors in outdoor education, criminal justice and environmental science.
“(Anthropology is) really an education about the world that other people don’t get… Anthropology is about humanity in a sense, so you learn about the entire world,” said Reed.
Following graduation, Reed wants to become a game warden, utilizing the topics in all of the areas he’s focused on over his five years.
While he still plans to run, Reed looks forward to exploring a new area of competition—boxing.
“I’ve been doing it for a couple years…and I just grew to enjoy it and get better at it,” said Reed. “Running is aggressive and there’s a lot of pain involved, but there’s not the same adrenaline that you get from contact sports, it just brings that back on another level.”
Though the prospect of returning to a more physical contact sport similar to wrestling excites Reed, he remains focused on the ongoing Longwood season.
“You can’t quit 95 percent of the way,” said Reed.
Reed has four more opportunities currently on the Longwood cross country schedule to attain his goal of breaking both the 8K and 10K records for Longwood.
