Sophomore Josh Jarpey has raced himself from an average runner in high school, to Winona State University’s top finisher in this year’s meets.

So how did Winona State get lucky enough to be his home for these next few years?

Jarpey explained how he really liked the area, like many of the other people who visit Winona, and that Winona State gave him the chance that he wanted.

“I wasn’t the best in high school, so I wasn’t really looked at by many other programs and I wanted to run D-II,” Jarpey said.

He went on to say that he also wanted to stay close to home, a two-and-a-half hour drive from Ham Lake, Minnesota.

Being that Jarpey runs for miles on end, he had to know what a runner’s high was like.

Jarpey said he gets a runner’s high every time he goes for a jog, but said beginning runners may not experience the same thing.

“You just run for a while, probably won’t get one the first couple years of running, but eventually you get to the point you get one every run,” Jarpey said.

He described the feeling as not getting tired and kind of forgetting how far you have been running.

So, what does Jarpey eat before his races?

“You don’t want to eat probably an hour or two before the race, but I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a banana,” Jarpey said.

Since Jarpey has been running his entire life, there has to be a secret that gets him to run faster.

“The bull analogy,” Jarpey said.  “You want to think a bull is chasing you when you’re racing to make you run faster.”

I’m sure all of us would run for our lives if there was a bull after us, and I bet some of us would even run from a feisty chihuahua.

Humans have a lot of weird quirks, two of those being evening out our steps per square in the sidewalk, and the other one being avoiding the cracks to save our mom from back pain.

Jarpey is too seasoned to count his steps and only avoids cracks if he’s looking down but with finish lines in sight and records to break, his eyes are always to the sky.

Unless he had a superpower of course.

When given the choice of any superpower in the world, Jarpey chose flying so he could see the world, and in this case would be looking down at it.

Follow Jarpey and the rest of the men’s and women’s cross-country team as they prepare for the NSIC championship meet this Saturday, Oct. 26, and Regionals Nov. 9.