“When you’re first coming here you think,

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For the Seawolves there is little downtime as practices can sometimes be doubles, and include weight training — UAA has specific weight training coaches — or cross-training, which can include biking or swimming, plus individual rehabbing and body care.

‘I’ll just eat at the dining hall and I’ll do this,’ but you can feel when you are not resting enough, when you aren’t eating enough,” Vera-Alvarado said. “You can see your performance, you don’t feel as good on the workout. I can feel it if I’m not eating enough, I can feel if I am not sleeping enough and my older teammates were pretty good at helping us figuring stuff like that out…and the coaches are really good about, not controlling our diet, but encouraging us to eat, they want us to be eating all the time…They provide per diem on trips and we have group meals to make sure we are eating…I live in a dorm so I don’t have a kitchen, but I eat three meals a day at school — usually a full plate of whatever’s there and veggies and fruit — and have a bunch of cereal, canned soups, trail mix and bars in my room…I like a good brown rice with steak adobo or chipotle, you can’t go wrong with that…and I always have my country wise email marketing list water bottle with me.”

A lot rides on the individual, but each is not alone as there are four freshmen to a room and older athletes live close by.

“I was talking with Merry (Ellefson, JDHS coach) about this,” he said. “Coming from Juneau I thought it would be really hard to find a team culture as close but this is awesome. You’re getting a collegiate team and it’s like a family because you live together, you eat together, you do everything together.”

Another lesson learned early was kit management. The athlete’s travel bag should have competition shoes and backup shoes. The athlete has multiple workout shoes, trainers and spikes.

“At my regions pre-meet my teammate stepped on my spike and he ripped it open,” Vera-Alvarado said. “We had to scramble that night to go find me a pair of new spikes and couldn’t. I just ended up taping my shoe to my feet so it wouldn’t fall off. My coach went up to the starting line before we started and just duct taped it like four times so it wouldn’t fall off…and now I have two pairs of spikes that I have with me all the time.”

Majoring in kinesiology and minoring in nutrition, Vera-Alvarado said he is learning a lot about himself.

“That’s one of the big reasons,” he said. “I think my long-term goal is to be a coach, and what is better than having a coach who went to school to basically be well trained…All my coaches in life have been well-versed in something and have contributed to who I am. I have found out a year goes by way faster than in high school. I am very sad my freshmen year is almost over…I’m looking forward next year to just enjoying the process a little bit more than just looking for the results. I found out that I enjoy the process of training with my teammates and just kind of learning about my body and how it changes, how my body transitions from running 5K to 10K…You have limited big days, you had limited races, and you know not every race is going to be a good day. So if you’re kind of just clinging onto those and jumping big race to race, you’re not really going to find much joy…and it takes a lot to try to balance school, running and being a person. If you’re not enjoying it you’re not going to want to keep doing it so I definitely learned how to find the joy in the running…and I found how I learned how to be better suited and a better friend, I guess, while trying to do that…I love that we go out into the community, we volunteer at Special Olympics and high schools…I learned that I love running and I love helping people…I learned that I really love helping the community and people who are trying to be active, things I will focus on as I move on to getting my degree.”