Saranac Lake junior Peter Fogarty nears the finish line of at Saturday’s Nike Cross Country New York Regional Championships at Bowdoin Park in Wappingers Falls. Fogarty placed ninth out of 203 runners and qualified for the Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, Dec. 7. (Provided photo — Griffin Smith)

SARANAC LAKE — Peter Fogarty, a junior, will be the first Saranac Lake High School student to compete in the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) this Saturday in Portland, Oregon. The race highlights the best high school runners in the country with 22 teams and 45 individuals.

Fogarty qualified for the race this past Saturday after finishing ninth out of 203 in the Nike Cross Country New York Regional Championships at Bowdoin Park in Wappingers Falls. Fogarty covered the 5,000-meter course in 16 minutes, 24.2 seconds.

“I wasn’t sure I qualified because they forgot to announce my name at first,” Fogarty said. “Then I was super psyched and really excited to go.”

Saranac Lake cross country coach Bill Peer said this is an incredible achievement for both Fogarty and the school.

“We knew we had a good team, and the goal was to get to the regional meet,” he said. “Throughout the season, I started to see Peter and (fellow captain) James Catania compete at state and federation levels. So if our team couldn’t get (to NXN), there was a distinct possibility one of our top guys could.

“If you told me in August, one of our kids would get into the Nike national race, I’m not sure if I would have believed you.”

Winning is not Fogarty’s mission for NXN.

“I really just want to go for the experience,” he said. “I don’t really have a goal.”

Peer said because the competition is so stacked, having Fogarty place in highly is not the main focus for Saturday.

“That would be phenomenal, but I’m not sure that’s our goal,” he said. “Just to have a Saranac Lake kid at the level, to have a Class C size school, to have an athlete to compete with large A and AA schools helps our program moving forward. A lot of our runners have options opening up to them collegiately, and we’re starting to get some contacts from Division I schools. It’s new and exciting.”

Fogarty has been running for the school’s cross country team since he was a freshman. Plenty of his friends were running on the team, and he had just finished up a season of indoor track, so he figured he’d give it a shot.

Often when an athlete is training, they’ll have a specific goal in mind for each day. A wrestler might focus on single-leg takedowns one day and standup escapes the next. Fogarty said he never really has a plan for what he wants to train, he just starts running.

“My mind just kind of goes numb, but I know that if I work hard, I can see the results I want to see,” he said.

The school’s runners take mandatory breaks throughout the year, but Fogarty said he trains through multiple seasons. During the summer, he would work full shifts at Mountain Mist ice cream shop on Lake Flower Avenue and then go for runs after. Sometimes he’d overindulge in the frozen treats.

“I did toward the beginning of the summer, but then I kept myself on a strict diet and tried to eat healthier,” he said.

Since ninth grade, Peer said he’s seen plenty of improvement in Fogarty.

“He’s really matured as a person and as an athlete,” he said. “He’s been a great captain for us this year. He’s very focused on his training, diet, nutrition and rest. And he’s just a great teammate. If you asked him what the goal was Friday and Saturday, he would’ve said he wanted the team to place.”

Speed is, of course, important for runners, but Peer said Fogarty is more unique than just being really fast.

“He has a tremendously high pain threshold,” he said. “He can be uncomfortable at a high rate for a longer period of time. He’s not afraid to get in the top pack or the chase pack and maintain that pace. Sometimes he’ll be in a lot of discomfort, but he maintains.”

In his first year with the team, Fogarty ran for a month before he noticed he was injured.

“During my freshman year, I actually had a stress fracture and ran on it for about four weeks and didn’t realize. I’ve been working on and trying to learn my limits of what I can do. Now I’m trying to push those limits and run as fast as I can.

“I was running on it for a while, then I kinda started to hurt. I mentioned it at the doctor’s, and they were, like, ‘Oh, you have a stress fracture. You probably shouldn’t be running or walking right now.'”

Fogarty said he doesn’t have any plans for college yet, but he wants to continue running.

“I don’t really know what I want to do, but running D-I sounds great.”

Fogarty’s qualifying for NXN comes after the school’s cross country team won the title in the 2019 NYSPHSAA Cross Country Championships, becoming New York’s top Class C boys team for the second year in a row.

“We kind of want to make the small schools show up on the map,” Fogarty said. “I’m really proud of my team, and I wish they could’ve come to NXN with me.

“That’s the goal for next year.”