Breakthrough!

The 3200m has always had a very special place in my heart.  It’s the second to last event, and in the bigger varsity meets when I was in high school that usually meant that it was run after dark under the lights as the spring air started to cool.  It can be a really tough race, too, if you run it right.  People talk about how the 800m is the hardest race, but let’s be honest, although the 800 involves a good 40-60 seconds of serious discomfort, that 2-mile will hurt you profoundly for a lot longer than that!  It’s a long enough race that you have to really be an aerobic machine to be successful running it, but it’s also short enough that speed can be a factor the whole way.  It is almost the exact distance that one can run at maximum oxygen capacity, and as anyone can tell you who has run at that speed, it’s rather uncomfortable, especially for, say, 10 minutes.  Two of my most memorable races from my own high school running career were two-miles, and both of them were under the lights at the end of the day.  One was a win in McPherson and the other one was a lifetime personal record in Topeka at our league meet.  I love the two-mile on a cool evening under the lights.  It’s been a long, long time since I’ve personally experienced the love, but Friday evening I remembered again through Wyatt why I love it so much.

The Sunflower League is a group of a dozen of the biggest schools in Kansas.  Each school has somewhere around 1500 students, and as a consequence there are a lot of talented runners when all those schools come together.  The meet was last Friday, May 11, and it was a cool, overcast, mostly still day that was perfect running weather.  The winner of the girls’ 1600 ran a national top-ten time of 4:45, and the boys’ race winner ran a highly impressive 4:18.  Wyatt’s teammate, Ben, ran his personal record and school record 4:23.  In my whole high school career I don’t think I ever personally saw another high school runner break 4:20.  I told Ben after his race that I had never seen anyone that I knew personally run a 4:23.  Those boys’ times may not be in the national class for high schoolers, but they are still darn fast times.  It was a fast night.

And so on that nearly perfect evening Wyatt lined up against a field of about 25 good, strong 3200m runners at 9:27 PM and the gun went off.   He came through the first quarter just under 75 and then through the second quarter just under 75 again.  When he came through the third quarter in 79 on pace to hit is mile PR, I ran across the infield to meet him on the backstretch with an urgent message.  The fact is, he looked strong.  He looked really strong and completely relaxed, not at all like he was struggling with running an opening mile close to his mile PR.  So, on the far side of the track I told him as he went by, “You might come through the mile under 5:10.  That’s OK, don’t worry about it.  You look good.  You look very good.”

Sure enough, he came through the fourth lap with a 5:09 cumulative split, only 5 seconds off his mile PR, and when I saw him on the subsequent backstretch I knew he was thinking about taking off and going for it.   “Relax,” I told him.  “Just relax and wait for 6.”  It seems he heard me and heeded me because he sat in behind his teammate, Mike, and cruised through his slowest quarter, an 83.  On the backstretch of the 6^th lap he and Mike were starting to have to work at it, but they dropped a second off the previous lap, and by the backstretch of 7 I could hardly believe what was shaping up.  I exhorted Wyatt and Mike to chase down two Olathe East runners several meters ahead of them (in the end they caught one and Mike missed getting the other one by a fraction of a second).  With 600 meters to go Wyatt was running great and was far far ahead of his previous personal record of 11:00.

On the final lap, I said this to Wyatt as he went by, “This is a special, special night.  Stay strong through the finish and you are going to crush your PR.”  And so he did, running a final 78 and setting a HUGE personal record in 10:35.  When he heard his time, I think it nearly brought him to tears.  He hugged me, he hugged his coach, Dan, and he hugged his mom.  He raised his tanned arms to heaven and several times said, “Thank you, Lord.”  Several of his teammates came around him and congratulated him on his outstanding race, and although he was completely exhausted he was walking on air.  I certainly was.  He had now, as a freshman, run a faster 2-mile than almost all of my high school races except for just a few of my very best ones.  I was thrilled for him.

Beyond the obvious elation that any runner experiences after a big breakthrough, I think this race had a lot of additional significance for Wyatt.  I suspect he had been having some doubts about his innate abilities as a runner and about his future potential.  He had been stuck for several races right around 11:05 +/- 5 seconds and I think he wondered if that’s where he would always be stuck!  Anyway, at the finish of this beautiful race he said some other things that really came from deep in his heart, but I don’t think I will write those things down here in a blog where anyone in the world might read them.  I think maybe those things are more deeply personal and part of his story that are better left for him to tell someday whenever he thinks it is time to tell them.

Epilogue:

Although there are no flukes in our sport, no lucky three pointers or lucky holes-in-one, it was nice last night (5/18) at the 6A regional meet for Wyatt to get further confirmation of his breakthrough.  On a much more difficult evening (more wind, warmer) Wyatt ran another 10:35, whereas almost all of his teammates’ times fell off from last week.  Certainly he has arrived solidly at a new level.

As for me, I managed to run a 1:24:28 half-marathon in the Kansas City Corporate Challenge this morning.  My knee never hurt.  I ran within myself and competed well for where my fitness level is.  During my race this morning mental images of Wyatt’s toughness in the last 1000m of his race last night inspired me to be strong and keep competing to my best to the very end of the race when I honestly wanted to just give up and cruise in.