A runner peeks his head out his door and sees the wet road, grey sky, and feels the chilly air, thinking it’s a great day to train. He begins his routine stretch to prepare himself and then heads out for his morning run. This is what Mount Vernon senior Henry Steine, a cross country and track runner, enjoys doing every day.

Over the summers Steine participates in many 5K’s and runs with his mom. Over quarantine, in 2020 Steine’s passion grew. When he was bored and couldn’t be with friends he would just run. His longest run was 13 miles and took him 1 hour and 45 minutes to complete.

Because of Steine’s passion for running over quarantine, he put his work into competition and went out for cross country for the first time his senior year. Previously, Steine played football for Mount Vernon and played lineman and linebacker, But knew his love was running.

Steine began his running career when his mom signed him up for marathon monsters when he was 6 years old. Marathon Monsters was a group of Mount Vernon elementary students that got together on the middle school track every morning. This group would run one mile each morning for 26 days to exercise and also train for a marathon. Steine got involved because he didn’t participate in many other activities or sports.

After a break Steine later picked back up his hobby of running in seventh grade when he was persuaded to go out for track to throw with his friends. “My favorite memory during seventh-grade track was throwing with my friend Ryan,” said Steine. This was important to Steine because they were really good friends. Enjoying his first year out for track played a big role in continuing his career. Steine valued spending time with friends and said it was a big factor in why he enjoyed track so much during middle school. From middle school to high school he seemed like an average runner but not many people understood the work he put in behind the scenes.

Steine’s success came from years of consistent training and running. “I enjoy changing routes, I choose random gravel roads and stop when I want,” he said. “It is very important to be consistent while training, I often vary my run length because it helps me train endurance but also allows me to recover.”

With all this running comes proper care. “Running too much can hurt my feet so getting a good pair of shoes is important, Hokas are my favorite shoes,” said Steine. Comfortable running shoes are greatly important, but Steine also shared that maintaining a nutritional and proportional diet is extremely important if you want to become a stronger and faster runner.

By sticking to his beliefs this year Steine improved his 5K time to 17:48 from 19:14 and competed on the varsity cross country team. He also hopes to run sprints or mid-distance and qualify for state in the upcoming track season this spring.