Five thousand male high school runners from Massachusetts toed the line this cross country season. Of those 5000 athletes, junior Lucas Aramburu has the second fastest recorded time for the 5K. His personal record, a time of 15 minutes and 13 seconds, was enough to qualify him for the Foot Locker Cross Country Nationals in San Diego.

Aramburu placed 38th in the nation at the meet, which took place on Dec. 9. This means that Aramburu was still training for cross country even when the rest of the high school running community had transitioned to indoor track.

“Balancing track and cross country was not an issue at all. I see them as a continuous running season from August to June. I am lucky that I could still do distance training for the 5k at Nationals, and now I’m done and ready to go right into faster work for indoor track,” Aramburu said.

According to Aramburu, he wishes he had a better performance during the season but is still thrilled that he was able to attend the meet.

“My season before regionals was a little bit shaky: I came in third at the state meet with a time that I was not really hoping for. Luckily, I was able to go all out when it mattered and have the race of my career at regionals,” Aramburu said. “I was not expecting to qualify for Nationals at all. I had gone into the regional race with a slim hope of coming top 10 and qualifying, so when I saw myself in third, it was a pleasant surprise.”

Senior Quinn Gangadharan, one of Aramburu’s teammates, said that he recognized Lucas’s talent and was wowed that he made it to such an elite meet.

“To be completely honest, I knew Lucas was amazing, but I had no idea he would go that far,” Gangadharan said.

Gangadharan said that Aramburu is excellent training partner.

“Lucas is a really good teammate. Sometimes he’s kind of distant because he is off doing a separate training plan, but he’s always really supportive and all-around a good teammate,” Gangadharan said.

William McCormick, a junior on the boys cross country team, agrees that Aramburu is a wonderful teammate both on and off course.

“He is definitely a hard worker. Although some of his workouts are brutal, in my eyes, I hardly see him complain and he just does what he’s told to do. I feel that he almost always wants the best for us, every one of his teammates. He really pushes us to succeed, and really shows through that, that cross country is really a team sport rather than an individual sport,” McCormick said.

McCormick was also happily surprised when Aramburu qualified for Nationals.

“I didn’t know that he was going to qualify, in all truth, solely because it’s hard to imagine someone who we run with everyday and someone who all of us are such good friends with in our daily lives rising up and achieving something so amazing,” McCormick said. “In the end, though, I’m pretty sure that every single one of us on the team knows that Lucas is really capable of achieving anything and can do great things.”