KC Corporate Challenge 2012 -- A Wonderful Mile

To quote, as near as I can remember, Pippin from The Two Towers movie, I am, “sitting on a field of victory enjoying a few well-earned comforts,” taking my time with a large bowl of ice cream before getting serious again tomorrow about removing more of my unnecessary fat, the enemy of speed.  I won the corporate challenge 800 meter tonight in an OK time of 2:11.5, leading it from the gun to the tape.  Tonight’s race, however nice it was to win, was not the highlight of KCCC for me this year, but it was the one I lost on Tuesday.  The Mile.

Since I started racing again in April I have run some decent times that I have been very happy with considering my relative lack of training, a couple of barely sub-18 5ks and a 1:24 half marathon.  Oh, and I ran that 5:03 1600m for the company mile tryout a couple of weeks ago.  All of these were nice confidence boosters that I have been very happy with, but nothing that has really stood out dramatically.  The half marathon was a real brutal struggle for the last 5 miles when I felt like my lack of training really hurt me, but I was nevertheless able to hang tough and to my utter surprise take my co-worker and running buddy Troy in the last half mile of that race.  Troy and I see-saw back and forth against each other year in and year out, and in the half marathon the teeter-totter tipped in my favor.  Truthfully, he had burned the fuel too hot in the early miles and he was really used up by the end of the race.  In the mile though, I had no confidence at all that I would even have a remote chance to beat Troy.  On tryout day he had run a very solid 4:49 to my 5:03.  Fourteen seconds is an eternity in a mile race.   

Nevertheless, I pictured myself running sub-75 quarters and I wondered how much, if any, fitness lift I might have gained from racing the half marathon as well as from running 15 miles this past Saturday morning.  Why not give it a shot.  I resolved that I would do whatever it took to hang onto Troy through 1200 and let the chips fall where they may.  Sometimes in those scenarios where the chips fall is that place of deep oxygen debt and lactic acid buildup where you can barely move your legs, and that makes for a very long, slow, uncomfortable, unsatisfying and even humiliating last lap in front of one’s friends and co-workers.  I decided to risk it anyway.  There was no way of telling where I was really at in my running physiology without going to the limit.  If you don’t touch the limit, you don’t know where it is!

Troy and I lined up next to each other on the inside lane for the waterfall start 9 or 10 meters behind the “normal” starting line because this race would be a true mile, not a 1600.  When the gun went off I took off at what I felt was a rather leisurely pace, basically inviting Troy to go around me and take the lead.  He did not.  I led the race through a fairly slow first 200 meters and when I heard old Andy (my high school coach and the PA announcer) call the 38-second split I picked up the pace a bit.  Still, we came through the first 409 meters in a rather easy 76 seconds.  And then Troy took off.

So I thought, OK, here we go.  To me it felt like he was really surging and for a split second I doubted my ability to hang onto him, but my will was set beforehand and I clung to him for dear life.  We came through the second quarter in a much quicker 72 seconds and then he seemed to wilt at about the same time I felt like I was actually beginning to hit rhythm.  So the lead changed again. 

It felt like I was pushing hard into the third lap now, and as we passed through 1000 meters something happened.  Something wonderful.  Here I feared would be where I would start to feel my lack of conditioning and the beginning of my doom, but what I felt instead was completely different.  Oh, at this moment I did begin to feel the burning in my legs.  I could feel the lactic acid accumulating.  But!  Despite the increase in discomfort I also felt strangely like I could push through it.  I felt like “what it takes” was going to be there, and although it would certainly hurt before the end, I could handle it and I could race another 600 meters without descending completely into the pit of iron legs despair.  I think it was about then I first thought about winning it.

Although I was trying to push that third lap hard, it was nevertheless only a 74 (being the third lap, however, 74 feels like 70!), and that pesky D-1 runner from Tennessee was still hanging on.  He told me after the race that I *almost* dropped him back there, but my surge wasn’t quite enough.  We hit the gun lap with me still in the lead and determined to press my advantage even harder.  I gave it everything I had in an aerobic gear for the next 300 meters, but still he hung on.  I could feel him behind me and I started to kick with 100 meters to go.  So did he!  And then it was like one of those slow motion movie scenes.  I was running as fast as I could under the circumstances, but seemingly centimeter by centimeter Troy came even with me, and then he was just a shoulder ahead of me, and then maybe a meter, and then we crossed the line….  Ahh, so close.  0.35 seconds separated us.  I absolutely hate losing races that I could win, but it has been impossible to be disappointed with this one. 

In many ways, this was one of the most fun races I have run in many many years.  To duel a guy whom I like and respect for a full four minutes and fifty four seconds, was just pure joy.  This is what I love about running, about racing.  I feel like we pushed each other and pulled each other and challenged each other the whole way and in the final analysis it was the battle itself that was a victory for me.  In my mind I really had no business running a 4:54 mile this week.  As I have written before (quoting a friend of mine, actually), there are no flukes in this sport, and guys who are not 4:54 guys cannot run 4:54 miles.  Period.  Still, this race felt like a major breakthrough for me for where I am.  It tells me that I am progressing quickly in returning to the shape I was in many months ago before surgery, and it tells me that I probably yet have a lot of headroom for improvement since I have not really trained very hard.  I am more proud of this mile, even though it was a second place finish, than I am of several races that I have won.  Seeking my limit and finding that it was a lot further out there than I thought it was, losing a hard fought tactical battle to a respected opponent while giving it my all, taking risk and being bold, that feeling in the third lap when I knew I could race it the whole way – all of these things made this little race really special to me.  It was a dandy.

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.

City Track Meet -- Boy Number 2

I never would have thought an April could be running paradise without the Boston Marathon, but it was outstanding.  Wyatt managed a couple of 3200s under 11:10, including a wonderful effort at Shawnee Mission West where he ran 11 flat.  He also ran a strong 5:04 at ODAC on the 6th.  I ran a post-microfracture debut 5k in 17:54 on April 21 that was a wonderful surprise since I would not have guessed that I could manage a sub-18 race off only a month of running.  The biggest surprise of all last month, however, was the emergence of boy number 2, Josiah, as a middle distance runner.  He has run the 800 and the 1600 for Frontier Trail Middle School in every meet this spring and, oddly, the 75m hurdles.  This post, however, is not about this past, wonderful month of running, as good as it has been.  This post is about one of the gutsiest, most fearless races I’ve ever seen.  This post is about the Olathe Middle School (7^th Grade) City 800m championship race that happened on May 3

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Honestly, I’ve never before thought of Josiah as a distance runner.  For one thing, he is my basketball boy, so I think of that as his primary sport.  For another thing, when the kids were littler he was always the first one to wear out.  When we hiked in the mountains, for example, we would barely get 200 yards from the car when he would need to sit down and rest and start asking, “Are we almost done?”  I thought then that he might lack the innate mental toughness needed to be a good distance runner.  Boys change, however, and it turns out I was wrong!

He wasn’t even going to run track this spring, but fortunately his mother had the good idea to conspire with Mr. Blasi, the head track coach.  Josiah wouldn’t listen to her encouragement to run track, but he did listen to Mr. Blasi and decided to go out.  At the start of the season he was the number 2 or 3 distance runner on the FTMS team, but he immediately started improving:  6:08, 6:01, 5:51, 5:45, 5:39 in the mile, and similar improvements in the 800 to get down to 2:34.  Going into the City Meet this week he was well positioned to do okay against the best runners from all 9 schools in Olathe. 

I took the afternoon off Thursday so I could see him run all of his events, including the hurdles.  In the previous meet he finished second in the hurdles and complained that the wet bottoms of his shoes slipped coming out of the blocks and slowed him down, so I took my spikes down from their perch up high in the closet to see if they would fit him.  They did.  And at City, then, he nailed an excellent hurdle run, taking 2^nd place in his best time of the year.

In the mile (1600m) there was stiff, stiff competition in the 7^th grade this year in Olathe.  He ran a very commendable race, making a nice surge in the third lap to move from 8^th to 6^th, burying the two guys he left behind.  He finished in a nice personal record 5:36, ten or more seconds ahead of 7^th place but also ten or so seconds behind 5^th.  The winner ran 5:14, and as good as Josiah got this year and as much as he improved, it definitely would have been expecting way too much to think that he would be competitive against kids going under 5:20.  He will get there against those kids if he wants to – I know he will – just not this year.  But still, he ran a nice 3-second PR against a really tough field.  I was really proud of his mile.  But then came the 800.

Had I just finished a mile in 6^th place 20+ seconds behind the winner there is almost no way I would have run the 800 – against almost all the same runners – the way Josiah ran the 800.  Seeded 7^th in the race, he was apparently completely unimpressed and unintimidated by the competition he just faced 75 minutes earlier.  At the gun he took off like he was shot out of a bow, and in the first 200 opened up at least 10m of lead over the second place runner.  By the time he came through the quarter he was still in the lead with a wicked fast 68.  

Leading at 400

Other runners were starting to close on him between 500 and 600, but I just had a fleeting thought that just maybe he might be able to actually hold it up.  Alas, no.  Mr. Lactic Acid jumped on him hard at 600, as he often does to runners who over-reach in that opening quarter of a half-mile, and Josiah’s opponents started going around him.   Coming through 600 and around the final turn he dropped to 2^nd, then 3^rd, then 4^th, 5^th….. 6^th.  Ahh, he had tried so hard.  He had given it everything he had, I figured.  He had risked it all against some really good competition, and he could hold his head high, even with another 6^th place finish.  But then with 100 meters to go something happened.  That boy of mine – the one who used to frustrate me when he was little because he didn’t seem to have toughness or competitive fire – did something competitive, something tough, something especially fiery.  He decided he was not going to finish 6^th, and he threw down a final, ferocious kick, and clawed his way back to 3^rd.  As he went by those three boys they all tried to respond, they tried to answer, but he continued to answer back, refusing to give up and refusing to be denied his spot on the podium, and he finished the 3^rd best 800m 7^th grader in Olathe in a massive personal record time of 2:26.9. 

Go Jaguars -- Josiah scores well-earned points in the 800

I wonder if someday Josiah and I will look back on this little 7^th grade track season as a watershed.  This year he learned he can run distance events.  He learned that he can be successful and win races (he won several).  I learned that he can be very tough.  I learned that he can be very competitive and absolutely full of fire.  May 3, 2012.  Write it down.

Good Friday, Duck-Duck-Goose and 5:04.8

If you’ve never played duck-duck-goose 1-on-1 against a 3 year old, you have not truly lived.  During my sitting turns, Lulit would walk around me and tap me once or twice as “duck” and then take off at “goose.”  Of course, for me there was no catching her as I tried to get my 45-year-old body quickly up off the rug while she raced out of the front room through the kitchen and then back into her spot in the front room.  Then, when I was “it” and tapped her as the goose I’d follow the same path through the kitchen, but that little quail would cheat and come around back the other way to make sure I was caught.  This was the joyous start of my Good Friday after the boys all got off to school.  I had the day off, which was a wonderful break from the awkward place that work has become for me lately.  I was blessed with lots of great time with the family on Friday, capped off with a nice mile by the firstborn boy. 

On Thursday afternoon he asked me how fast he would have to run for me to pay him five dollars, and we agreed on 5:05.  Here then are the splits from his high school mile debut (they don’t come out perfectly due to some slight rounding error):

72.9

77.8

77.6

76.6

Put another way, 2:30.7 + 2:34.1 = 5:04.8, and just barely fast enough to put me out an Abe Lincoln!  Dang, that is a well paced race, and 25 seconds faster than his fastest 8^th grade mile.  What a runner he is becoming.  What a runner he is!

Good Friday is good for me, isn’t it?  Jesus died for my sins and displayed the glory of His love for us all.  The original was a horrible, shocking Friday, but it was definitely a good Friday.  This Good Friday was also a pretty good day – much smaller by comparison, but still a good day.  Thank you, Jesus.