Ran 5.5 total miles on road at 7:00 pace on the first day of cross country practice. Twelve guys showed up: me, Nellie, Chris, Moose, Ken, MikeW, BrianT, Stew and 4 of the JV Hordes. My right knee still hurts.
30 years later:
It was the tradition back then to start official cross country practices one week prior to the beginning of the school year. I believe that was established as a rule by the WIAA (Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association). I remember hoping to have about 20 guys show up, from which we would winnow out 7 varsity runners, and still have a full junior varsity squad to develop the younger runners. While you can't tell from my log entry, I was rather disappointed and anxious when only 12 guys were there, and really there were only 5-6 who were varsity material. I recall thinking about adjusting my goals, to be more focused on individual placing than on building a team that could challenge for the conference title. That wasn't being brash, it was just me thinking that our team wasn't strong enough to contend, thus it would be a waste of energy to fret over that aspect of the season.
On the bright side, we had a coach, finally, Frank Briscoe, who seemed like a nice guy if a little surprised to be an actual cross country coach. As far as teammates, Moose McGann was obviously in shape, and Nellie had been running pretty consistently over the summer, something I don't think he'd really done before. Chris just looked bigger and stronger, I guess he'd probably gone through a growth spurt in the past few months and he kept up with us throughout this run, which was a very good sign. I remember going home after practice and chatting with my mother, who said she was sure that a few more guys would turn out after I'd worked so hard to recruit them. You can always rely on Mom to be on your side, right? To this day, my mother tends to agree with and support everything I say, which my wife loves to tease me about.
Cross country season was underway. I knew that I'd have to train hard and race smart. I believed that my main competition would come from Terry Connors of Wisconsin Dells, Matt Klecker of Reedsburg, and Mike Bennett of Portage. I would be keeping my eye on early season results from all three to see how we were going to stack up against one another. Little did I know that there would be a couple of darkhorse runners who would sneak up on us during the season, including one from my very own team. But I'm getting ahead of myself, you'll need to wait to see how it all unfolds as the season progresses.
I believe this is a fairly recent photo of Matt Klecker, culled from the alumni testimonial pages of the University of Wisconsin Business School. Matt, if you're out there, drop me a line.
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