Cross Country Q&A: Jalen Frantal

Senior Jalen Frantal of the Pepperdine men's cross country team gives us a glance at this weekend's Capital Cross Challenge in Sacramento, as well as how the team has been working through some setbacks this season:

Q: How have the first two meets gone for you personally?

A: Personally, I was happy with the first meet. I ran faster than I did the previous year, so that was good. However, the second meet was really hard. I was about the same time but I think just in terms of effort level, it was exponentially harder.

Q: How has the transition to Coach Mosqueda been for the team?

A: Any time you have a new coach it takes some adjustment, but I think that she brings a ton of enthusiasm, which is fantastic, and she really cares about us. Her workout style is a little different, but we've adapted well. I think overall, it's great to have this change.

Q: How has training been thus far?

A: It's been really tough. Under our previous coach, we did a lot of high mileage, we were running around 90 to 100 miles a week. With Coach Mosqueda, we do lower mileage but higher-quality workouts. There are weeks where we'll be doing three hard workouts a week, which takes a toll on us. But I think if we can respond and our bodies can adapt to it, it gets us in a lot better shape than it would have been otherwise.

Q: How has the team been working through the injuries this season?

A: We're just supporting each other. We have three guys right now who have been here the whole season, who've been training and staying in shape that we can depend on. However, two or three of our other top runners are injured. We hope that they're back soon but we're just taking it meet by meet and doing more of an individual type of races.

Q: What are your hopes for the next two regular-season meets?

A: We have Sacramento coming up this weekend and last year we won out of the Division I teams. I don't know if we can repeat that, but I think that it's a fast course and we're just hoping to see what we can do. A couple of the guys who were injured will be racing this weekend. Then we have a two-week break before our last regular season race, which is Santa Clara. I think we're hoping by then to have a solid five guys, maybe six guys racing, and hopefully trying to compete before we go on conference.

Q: Looking forward to WCC and regionals, what is the team looking to accomplish?

A: When we came in ranked in the region, we expected to obviously improve upon that ranking. However, with the injuries, I think that we're just going in with an open mind and as the Cinderella underdog. We can hopefully surprise some people and hopefully show that we deserve to be ranked still.

Q: What are you hoping to achieve at conference and post season?

A: I think that conference is less about time and more about placing. I'm hoping to be with the top group as long as I can be and to finish strong. Regionals is an entirely different story. We're part of one of the best regions in the country, so I think to be even top 50 in the regional race would be really a good achievement.

Q; What does it mean, this being your senior season?

A: We haven't had the season that I had envisioned based off of what we did last year and what we expected for this year. It's just been amazing seeing how far the program has come since my freshman year. My freshman year, we raced four people at regionals because we didn't have the people who even wanted to go and then coming into this season ranked, I think that's incredible. So, for me, it's not really how we do this season, it's about the legacy that I'm leaving behind.

Players Mentioned

Jalen Frantal

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