A million sweaty summer steps add up to a third-place finish for junior Ryan Nix and a team title for Chesterton at the Larry James Invitational

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

A gabled roof, Doric columns on the portico replete with patterned tiles. Nice, if you can afford it, but it turns into ruins if not preceded by building a strong foundation.
That’s what Chesterton junior distance runner Ryan Nix did during this past hot-and-muggy summer. He built a foundation, one foot in front of the other, for 700 miles.
Nix stands 6-foot-2-1/2 and weighs 165 pounds. He ran most of the summer miles at a moderate pace, so given all those factors, it’s reasonable to estimate that he ran roughly 1,429 steps per mile. If that’s the case, then Nix surpassed the million-step mark on his final run of the summer.
Teammate/classmate Nick Jakel was with him “99% of the time,” according to Nix, also compiled 700 miles, and would have surpassed the milestone a little sooner because his stride isn’t as long.
A million sweaty steps turned Nix into the beast that he was early Saturday morning at the fourth Larry James Invitational at Sunset Hill Farm, where Chesterton’s boys team won the meet and Nix placed third with a time of 16:11.13.
A million sweaty steps built a strong enough foundation that Nix ran the fastest time from a Chesterton runner in the four-year history of the meet. Faster than the 16:28.26 that teammate Spencer Martin ran last year as a sophomore. Faster than the 16:40 that Jackson Tuck ran as a senior in the inaugural Larry James in 2022. Faster, even, than the 16:13 that Evan O’Connor posted in 2023 as a senior.
Those are some salty names right there and for one day and one race at least, Nix moved to the head of the pack. And he did it with a time that was more than 53 seconds faster than in last year’s meet.
Only Warsaw’s Jackson Gackenheimer (15:33.99) and Lake Central’s Ben Perschon (15:47.76) finished ahead of Nix. Mighty Northridge was in the race and appeared to be using the 5,000-meter race more for tempo training than trying to win, not an uncommon practice for early season meets, but that doesn’t taint Chesterton winning the team championship and Nix taking third. The Trojans had to run their best to do it and they answered the challenge in impressive fashion. Surely, it can only boost the confidence of a team that had such a productive summer running over the hills and far away.
Once the school year starts what the calendar technically still considers summer becomes fall for the purposes of high school sports seasons. Cross country is a fall sport, but Nix achieved his third-place finish during summer by any definition, the 10-week school break, 60 miles a week, one sweaty step at a time a million times.
“When I look at summer, I look at building our endurance because once you get to season we do workouts and speed training, and so there’s not a lot of endurance building up, but over the summer when we put up those long runs we’re building our endurance so that when we step up to the line during a race, we know we’re not going to die out toward the end of it,” Nix said.
There you have it. Nix knew his foundation was strong enough that he could push the pace to produce his best race. He ran roughly the same time a year ago at the DAC race at Lake Central, a flat course that lends itself to much lower times than does Sunset Hill.
He's in his wheelhouse when he’s running cross country, but it’s not just because he likes the scenery. He shared a well thought out explanation for why he performs better in the fall than at the oval races of spring.
His advantage, he said, is strength-based, whereas someone more suited to track might have a speed advantage.
“I don’t get to experience that strength advantage on the track because there are no hills to push up, no grass that’s resisting you,” he said. “But when we come here or even New Prairie, you know you’re going to have to work even harder because there are hills and squishy dirt that’s going to resist you.”
Course familiarity also worked in Nix’s favor.
“I love this course. We run here on Tuesdays and Thursdays for practice. We’ll run it for part of our maintenance mileage,” he said. “I love that it has hills. It’s got a 180-degree turn. t’s got sand. It’s what you think of when you think of a cross country course. It’s got any aspect you could imagine.”
So far, Nix has stayed healthy during his career, which he attributes to the coaching staff implementing hip mobility drills every other practice and extensive stretching on the other days.
Martin was Chesterton’s next finisher at seventh with a 16:48.38, a time that made him happy because he rested an injury for most of the summer and is only two weeks back into training. The pain in his left hip didn’t please as much as the time and that will be a situation that he and the coaches will keep an eye to see if another rest period makes sense.
“Spencer’s going to be great,” Nix said. “We don’t need him to be great now. We need him to be great in October.”
Martin on Nix’s take: “100%.”
Senior Will Roberson, whose sub-2-minute half mile, seemingly from out of nowhere just might have been the most unexpected feat for a Chesterton athlete during the 2024-25 school year, finished 10th with a 17:01.50, a time that indicates he is taking cross country more seriously in his second year participating in it. He ran an 18:38.93 in the Larry James JV race in 2024. That’s a lot of time to clip in a year.
Jakel, Nix’s summer running partner, ran a 17:09.46 to finish 14th. Jakel is Chesterton’s Exhibit B in making the case for piling up the summer miles. Coming off a summer of major miles, he ran an 18:17.41 at the meet last year, a 21:36.22 as a freshman, when he had not built the foundation with summer running the way he did the following two years.
Will Morgan was Chesterton’s fifth and final scorer, running a 17:21.06 for 15th place. Other Trojans in the varsity race: 17. Nolan Harrington (17:32.18), 19. Aaron Pieters (17:43.47), 21. Xander Sierazy (17:48.19), 35. Eli Fletcher (18:19.49), 38. Max Redman (18:27.24).
Team scores are calculated by adding the top five places together: 1. Chesterton 49; 2. Northridge 61; 3. Lake Central (77); 4. Demotte Christian 100; 5. Warsaw 104; 6. Portage 178; 7. Morgan Township 219; 8. Griffith 220; 9. Hobart 287.