GRAY — The old cliche about giving 110 percent looks good on a chalkboard and sounds good coming out of the mouth of a football player. To a runner, it might bring another cliche to mind, the one about biting off more than you can chew.

Competing in cross country is about building toward peaking at the end of the season. Going too hard too early or for too long in cross country usually leads to a dead end.

Will Shafer’s legs and lungs reached a dead end well before the 2011 Class B cross country championships. The result was a disappointing 20th-place finish one year after the Gray-New Gloucester runner burst on the scene with a ninth-place finish.

“I think I overtrained and started speed work too early in the year,” he said. “I got sick toward the end of the season and it just kind of spiraled down hill.”

With the end of his fall season providing extra motivation, Shafer not only stopped the spiral but blasted off in the other direction.  He won a state championship in the mile and a second place in the 800 meters during the spring.

Shafer doesn’t think his success in the spring will necesarily translate into elite status at the end of this fall. For one, of course, cross country races are more than three miles long. He’s also more comfortable on the track than on the trails. He’s been doing it longer (he started running track at age six, cross country at nine), and his long, flowing stride is more conducive to success on a flat surface.

“It’s completely different in terms of how I approach it,” Shafer said. “The mental part helps because the 800 and the mile are pretty painful races. Other than that, I think they’re way too different (for success in one to spill over into the other).”

Shafer spent the summer focused on increasing his miles. He went to a running camp at Dartmouth College and also worked on a strength and conditioning program five days per week.

Since workouts with the team began earlier this month, he’s been splitting up his runs, doing a workout with the team, then going out on his own, to limit the stress on his body while increasing his mileage. He’s also being more conscientious of his pace.

“The thing about Will is he’s very disciplined. When we’re doing speed work, he’s very good at doing stuff at the right pace,” Gray-New Gloucester coach Adam Zukowski said. “A lot of times in high school, they come out and just do everything all out and then they end up getting burned out. In track, I was really focused on getting him to run at the paces he was supposed to be at, and he did that, which is why he had so many breakthroughs last track season.”

Like everyone else in Class B, Shafer’s target this season is Fryeburg Academy’s Silas Eastman, the two-time defending state champion.

Eastman’s dominance doesn’t intimidate Shafer. They’ve been competing against each other since middle school, and Shafer beat Eastman in the mile at the Western B championships last spring. But Shafer knows he and everyone else pursuing Eastman in the Western Maine Conference’s large field of elite runners will have their work cut out for them.

“He’s been so good for three years. You know that he’s putting in the miles and he’s ready to go for the year,” Shafer said. “He’s just so consistent.”

Zukowski believes Shafer, who hopes to attract the attention of Division I track programs this year, has the talent, drive and discipline to challenge the state’s elite.

“One of the things that makes him so good is he’s so competitive and he wants to run with the best,” Zukowski said.

He also wants to run at his best at the right time.

“My freshman year was kind of a dream season. Then my sophomore year was kind of more reality,” Shafer said. “I’m just trying to be smarter these next few years.”

The chances of that happening are 110 percent.