Huge props to Paige Neff, a junior from Camas High School, who set two lifetime bests in one week!  Averaging 5:55 in the 1-mile as a freshman, and 6:12 in the 1-mile as a sophomore, Paige opened her 2017 season with a lifetime best of 5:40.7 at a dual meet against Heritage High School.  Four days later, Paige had another great performance by rhythmically running a steady pace at the Tiger Invite in Battle Ground, racing to a six second personal record of 5:33. 

Paige started training with Whisper Running on December 28, 2016 and has continued to show steady improvement.  Committing to an off-season training program is never easy, and with the nasty weather we had during the past three months, it's been downright miserable at times.  But Paige persevered and committed to the grinds of training in off-season training.

I asked Paige for a reflection of her off-season training,  as well as her thoughts thus far on her season performances, and here is what she had to say:

"A little over a year ago I made the very difficult decision to not participate in high school cross country during the 2015-2016 season. I made this decision because I was struggling with a breathing problem, Vocal Cord Dysfunction, that made even the warm-ups feel like an impossible task. Vocal Cord Dysfunction is were your vocal cords seize up during exercise making it difficult for air to pass through and go to your lungs and there is no medicine to help this. I had been dealing with this problem for two years and my body had had enough. During my season off I didn't run at all. I barely had any physical activity and was on a decline. I realized that without running, my life was a struggle to do basic things. I was so unproductive and realized this was not the way I wanted to live my life. At the beginning of 2016 I started to run on my own. I would run a couple miles a day just to get back in some form of physical shape. I was preparing for the upcoming track season but because I had such a set back of not running for three months, it was hard to get back to the shape I was in before. I worked hard during the 2016 track season and was ready for the cross country season. In the space of a year I had worked hard to get back in shape and I even became an alternate for the Camas cross country team but I wasn't done. I was so eager to train and potentially be on Varsity for this upcoming cross country season. During the off-season I found Dave and we started to train in January of this year (2017). His motivation through our workouts inspired me to keep working hard at my goals. When I wasn't training with him I was out running and pushing myself to get better. I trained with him and some other girls for a little less then two months. During that time I learned so many important things from Dave and the group we ran with. Then came this current track season. I am in the best shape I have ever been in because of what I did in those two months with Dave in the off-season. It really pays off to put in that extra work. Even if it doesn't seem like much now, it will show the difference between who worked hard and who settled for 'good enough'."

Congratulations, Paige, on your outstanding accomplishments so far this season, and I wish you continued success as your season unfolds!

Go Papermakers!

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