Kade Bullion '21 Recruiting Profile

I first became interested in running when I was in 5th grade and I went to watch my younger sisters track meet. This is where I first saw the fundamentals of a track meet and thought it would be fun to do that someday. The summer of 2014 is when I did my first year of track and that's where I fell in love with long distance running. My school district didn't have any middle school sports so if you wanted to do a sport you had to find a rec or club team to participate in. This is how I met my club coach John Martinez who taught me the importance of training hard and showing me how it pays off. I also had an amazing English teacher, Mrs. Beilman, who was also an avid runner both in high school and college. She would always ask me about how my season was going during class, and would always give me good tips that truly helped me with my running form and my training. My freshman year we had a senior on our team named Gavin Glaza, who took me under his wing and did secondary coaching for me and left a really good impact on my season and also by inspiring me to look out for the new runners, help them and give them encouragement. 

My freshman year was an incredible year for me with breaking 18 minutes in the 5k, breaking 5 minutes in the 1600m, and getting 11:10 in the 3200m. My sophomore year the expectations were high and I was excited to see how much I could improve my time. But over the summer I had an I-T Band issue and took a month off of training to heal and this is where I first heard the term, "the sophomore slumps". This quickly embedded itself into my head and made me second guess my times. I was still able to make second team all-conference and qualify for state but I had this thought that I could have done so much better if I hadn't hit my sophomore slumps. I then started to work on my mental training which helped me to get a 4:48 1600 and a 10:34 3200 in track because I had trained mentally for 3 months. My Junior year of XC we got a new coach, Forrest Vaughan, and he pushed us harder than we had ever been pushed before with 55 mile weeks 3 weeks in a row and 13 mile long runs. I ran my Pr. two meets into the year and made second team all conference and qualified for state again with our team being 11 points of from making state. At the state meet I was tripped up and lost a shoe not even a mile into the race. I then ran 2.75 miles of rocky ground and the most hilly course in Colorado placing 161st and a time of 19:33, which was my worst time since my freshman year. I was disappointed but as I walked out off the course I was greeted my all of my teammates congratulating me and then became very happy to have such a supportive team. Through running I have learned what true mental toughness is and how much fun it is to run alongside of supportive teammates and a supportive coach.