I get asked from time to time if or where I was a collegiate runner. I guess my running credentials have come far enough in the last handful of years that people suspect that I might have been a good runner, you know, “back then.” Then I have to tell them, no, I was an okay runner in high school, and I did not run in college. As if to say, I coulda, woulda, shoulda, I sometimes tell people that it is one of the greatest regrets of my life, although my beautiful bride somewhat justifiably finds this hurtful. Had I been a college runner, indeed the odds would have been greatly diminished that we would have met and shared the life together that we have, and I certainly wouldn’t change the primary course of my life. The Lord has blessed me by truly bringing all my dreams to reality, bit still I have this nagging sense of what could have been. How good could I have been?
In the summer of 1984 another former runner from my high school arranged for me an entrée to the University of Kansas cross country team as a walk-on runner, and I was quite excited about it. I went down to Lawrence a few days before the dormitories opened and stayed with him so I could start running with the team. Over the summer I had run a little bit on my own, but not very consistently, not terribly far, and not very hard at all. Looking back I realize that in high school I probably got by in competition a lot better than I deserved with a reasonable talent level, coasting through off seasons with sporadic running and responding quickly and fairly well to the training stimuli when the seasons started. Running with the KU guys, however, was a bit of an eye opener to say the least.
The first handful of runs at KU I don’t remember as being terribly long or terribly fast, and although I struggled a little bit because of my lack of sufficient summer preparation, I was okay. But along there somewhere toward the end of the first week a coach took us out in the country 12 or 14 miles and dropped us off with instructions to run back home. The guys all took off. I stayed with them as long as I could, but it wasn’t long before I was dropped and really struggling. I don’t think it was until years later, running my first marathon completely unprepared, that I ever had another experience like that. I probably used up everything I had in the first 6 or 7 miles and then it turned into a death march. And then it dawned on me that this was not going to be at all like high school. No, indeed, this was going to be work, and probably a lot of it. Certainly coasting through the off seasons was not going to be an option, and I doubted myself, whether or not I could handle running at the college level and also being an engineering student and, quite honestly, whether or not I could do both of those things and still have any fun. I was also intimidated by the other runners on the cross country team. These guys were good. They were far better than I was and had much better high school running records. So, just like I walked on, I walked off.
As pathetic as that was, quitting without giving it anything like an honest shot, I was nevertheless given a second chance! It is seared into my memory the day I was walking along campus after just up and quitting.when Bob Timmons, the legendary KU coach, spotted me, drove up next to me and called me to his car. He asked me why I quit. I gave him my lame excuses. I remember these words exactly, “Joe, I don’t want you to quit.” Here was this man who had trained Jim Ryun to run a sub-4:00 mile in high school talking to this kid who was literally a nobody also-ran from the middle of Kansas, encouraging him to stick with it and not quit. I am still disgusted with myself when I look back on that day and consider the choice I made. Lame, lame, lame. Fear. Fear of hard work. Fear of failure.
Now 28 years later I can never know what would have been. C.S. Lewis argued that none of us ever gets to know that. I also don’t know what Timmons saw in that scrawny 18-year-old kid, but now I should at least like to have some idea. For this reason as much as any other I’ve set for myself some really ambitious goals for the next few months. It’s always dangerous to make goals very public, even if only to the reader of my blog (hi, mom), because there is of course a real risk of failure. There is also a real risk that I won’t even be granted the attempt. That dumb knee of mine…. I think, though, that the Lord is giving me at least a season, perhaps a brief one, to take a shot at settling some old questions in my soul. It’s pretty hard to compare race performances between 46- and 17-year-old boys, but nevertheless I’d like to at least beat my old high school self at his best, and also I would like to run a marathon time that proves, at least in my mind, that I am a “real runner” and that maybe, possibly, had I the work ethic and mental toughness then that I have now, I could have run with those guys at KU and succeeded. Maybe I can’t go back and do it over, but I sure can press forward from here and see where some of the limits are.
So, concretely this means really 3 things to me. First up, the marathon. I know there are a lot of college runners who have run under 2:40, but although that’s not a particularly spectacular time among “real runners”, I am content that achieving this would put me in pretty good company across runners of all ages, and certainly it would put me among some very very good masters runners. It also means that I would have qualified for the Boston Marathon under any standard of qualification at any point in time. I remember that a couple of my high school teammates ran sub-2:40 marathons during their college days. It would be nice to be in their company.
Second, I would like to run a 5k under 16 minutes. This also is definitely not a special time for collegiate runners. Heck, one of my co-workers, a former collegiate runner, was somewhere down in the 14's back in his prime. I suspect that 14:59 is probably out of reach for the remainder of this lifetime of mine, but 15:59 sounds nice. When I was in high school we didn't run 5k for cross country (as they do these days), so I don't really have on old PR to compare, but sub-16 around these parts is almost a guaranteed state qualifier for a high school runner. With my placements in high school I never would have made the state meet as an individual; I was just fortunate enough to be part of a team that was good enough to go. So, 15-something seems like a pretty good place to set the bar, and it has that nice round feel to it that we runners love. I am fairly certain this time represents a bettering of my best high school self.
Finally, there is a race where I have a good solid time to beat, my 3200-meter time of 10:01. Yeah, although I am still proud to this day of how gutsy I ran that race, I sure would like to have shaved off a couple more seconds. At our league track meet in Topeka I decided at the start that I was not going to run where I was "supposed to." I was going to run with the leaders (one of whom went on to win State) and take my chances. My chances were OK through a mile or maybe even 2000 meters, but then I really started to hurt. I labored hard through the 6th and 7th laps, and by the 8th lap the guys in 4th, 5th and 6th place were coming up hard behind me. I don't know if I have ever dug more deeply than I did in the final 200 meters of that race, but I held those guys off and earned myself a nice bronze medal and a personal record. I'll never forget that my coach was ecstatic because apparently by holding off a couple of those guys from Manhattan I had managed to push their whole team down a spot in the team placings. On a fresh day I feel pretty confident that I could go out and run under 10:20 right now. But I sure would like to run a 2-mile, or even the 19-meters-short-of-2-miles 3200 meter, in 9:59 or faster. I think almost all the college guys I have known at least broke 10:00 in high school. I'd like to do it, too.
Do I have a chip on my shoulder? Something to prove? Yep, you bet. I sure like running fast. I enjoy it thoroughly, and as I have written before I think running is a part of who I am as God designed me to be. So, while I'm on this chase to find out where my limits are as a 40-something dude, I'd also like to beat some young guys along the way, including me.
