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Steamboat Springs — The names sit above an entrance to the high school gym. They're the names of the individual distance record breakers in track and field and are subtly stacked above each other by event on a bright red board.

The 800-meter and 1,600-meter records are more than 20 years old. The 3,200-meter record dates back to 1970.

And every day, Steamboat Springs senior Matt Hill walks past them and waits for the time his name will be up there.

Hill knows it's not a matter of if his name will appear on the board, but rather a matter of when.

"My plans," he said with confidence, "are basically to re-write the distance record board."

What started as a challenge from high school distance coach Greg Long has turned into somewhat of an obsession.

Long said after the annual track and field banquet last year, he challenged Hill to try to set the records.

He has witnessed a changed Hill ever since.

For more than a year now, Hill has trained six days a week, taking only "a few" breaks from his training regimen.

Hill does intense workouts on Monday and Wednesday, long runs - up to 90 minutes - on Saturday and core workouts after shorter runs the other days.

When all is done, Long estimates Hill runs between 50 and 60 miles a week.

"This training I am doing now is real valuable," Hill said before a workout on Wednesday. "It's this right here that's definitely going to make me break those records."

Long, who still owns his high school distance records and ran a sub-four-minute mile while in college at Utah State, said the unique thing about distance running, and unlike some other sports, is that God-given talent has nothing to do with whether a runner is successful.

In the end, Long said, it comes down to who works and trains the hardest.

"There are no gifts in distance running. You do the work, you get the results," Long said. "That's the thing I like about Matt : He made a commitment to get better early and he'll do whatever I ask of him."

Hill made the decision to focus solely on running after his sophomore year.

After playing basketball the first two years of high school, the lanky senior with shaggy brown hair focused on running. But during his junior year, Hill struggled with achilles tendonitis.

It hampered his ability to perform as well as he wanted.

"I wanted to pull some of the records down last year, but I got injured so that didn't happen," Hill said. "That kept me from doing what I needed to do."

Long said he had a long-term goal for Hill. Last year. Hill didn't have the "base" to compete with a lot of the top runners. So instead of rush him too much his junior season, Long focused the training to help Hill this year.

"Last year, we were running and he turned to me and said, 'you're focusing all this on next year,'" Long said. "He kind of figured out where my head was. Last year he didn't have that base. He's such a different runner now than last year."

Now the training involves increasing Hills' training habits every three weeks. The training started by running hard for 50 minutes.

Now Hill runs hard for 90.

"The thing about Matt now is, he is really willing to do the workload to get better," Long said.

Part of that workload has involved competing in races around the region. Last Sunday, Hill competed at an indoor meet in Boulder. Running his first 1,500-meter race ever, Hill came in first. The runner who came in second hadn't lost

an indoor track meet all

year.

"The thing that was nice about last weekend was he hung back and won it with a kick," Long said. "He's learning to race."

Hill said the indoor track season just remains part of his training for the 2007 track season.

"Right now, it's just kind of a workout," Hill said. "A really fast workout, but something to just see where I am."

When the track season starts, Hill said he would like to pre-qualify in all of his events for state and then pick which two he'll do at state.

Right now he knows he'll do the 1,600 - or mile - but is unsure what other two he'll

do.

One thing he is sure of is by season's end his name will be among those on the subtle record-board outside of Kelly Meek Gymnasium.

"It's pretty important," Hill said of breaking the records. "It's one of the things I've been striving for all through high school. I'll probably break them - actually probably for sure."