On a weekday during track season, Dom Kone wakes up, goes to class, grabs a quick lunch, walks down to the gym to practice for three hours, eats dinner, works on his homework until midnight, and then goes to bed. “Then on the weekends, I have track meets,” Dom says. “And Sunday I go back to doing more homework. Running takes up so much time that all I can really do on the side is catch up on my homework.”
Dom does a lot of work to stay in shape for both indoor track during the winter, and outdoor track during the spring. He spends a lot of his time in the gym working on his strength and agility. “I do a fair amount of biceps. I really don’t bench that much because I’m not good at it, and I find it pretty hard.” He laughs. “I’m pretty lazy. I do arms—curls, tricep pulls, I do a lot of squats, and I do a shit ton of sit-ups a) because it’s good for the show, and b) because it helps with running. And I obviously I do a lot of running—I mean, obviously.”
Aside from the physical training, Dom also has to make sure he eats right, especially before a meet. He has the ritual down pact—“The night before, I try to eat a lot of pasta, and drink a shit load of water. And I eat as much protein and drink as much water as possible the day of the race. Gotta stay hydrated.”
Dom also stresses the importance of preparing mentally before a meet. Formerly, he was the type of runner that remained nothing but serious before a race. “I used to get so intense right before I ran that I barely talked to anyone around me,” he confesses. “I looked pretty crazy, and pretty mean.” But after his performance in the preliminaries at Nationals for indoor-track, during which he tried a slightly different approach to his pre-race ritual, he has decided to change his ways for good. “I just tried to stay calm, happy, and outgoing before the race to get rid of some of the nerves. And I had the best race of my life because of that. Now I have the same physical routine, but I have fun, and try to relax. It really is just mental.” At that very race, Dom ended up with the fastest time in the nation for the 55-meter race—6.34 seconds. He says, “I asked for it, and it happened. I broke our school record, and I broke their facility record.” He was ready to win in the championship race.
However, luck didn’t seem to be on Dom’s side. During the National Championship, Dom pulled his hamstring 35 meters in, and hobbled across the finish line. “It was a pretty sobering moment to know that I could have had the national championship in my hands. It was right there, but obviously I can’t control injuries. I was on the verge of tears, but all the sprinters saw that I was upset, and everyone said I should just kill it for outdoor. It made me feel ten times better.”
Dom has high hopes for his outdoor-track season—he has his eyes on the prize. But he does not let the fact that he’s the fastest man in the nation get to his head. “I don’t try to think about being fast, because if I keep saying I’m the best, and that no one can touch me, I would get a big head. There’s always room for improvement. I can always get faster. I don’t want to say I’m the best. I need to stay humble—people will respect me more if I’m a great athlete, but also very humble about it, so that’s what I try to do.”
Off the track, Dom is goofy, and very relaxed. He says proudly, “I like dancing and singing, especially girly songs, but I’m not good at dancing or singing.” Dom is a Biology major with a concentration in Environmental Science. After Colby, he plans to attend graduate school to become a wildlife biologist. “My ideal situation would be to work for Discovery or National Geographic. Every animal lover’s dream.” With his quickness, we expect Dom to keep up with the cheetahs and other notoriously fast wildlife he’ll be studying!
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