September 20, 1979 (Thursday)

From running log:
Cross country RACE. 2 mile warmup, 3 mile race, 0.5 cooldown (5.5 miles). I ran 17:24 for the 3 miles on the Adams-Friendship cross country course, wearing the Nike Universe spikes. I won again! Buried Connors, but barely beat Klecker (!) What's wrong with Connors? The team won again, we are undefeated in the conference. My upper back is sore - why? My hip didn't bother me today, and my knees feel okay. Took two Tylenol around 2:30pm for headache and toothache. Chest cold still hanging on, how do I kick it? Ben, Chris, and Ken ran well today. Todd and Tim can probably run better. We didn't beat Dells by as many points as last time. I still think we are a favorite for conference. Holy Name meet on Saturday. I want to beat Portage's guys, especially Bennett. And to beat Connors again!

30 years later:

What I remember most from this race is the first mile, during which the home team made a concerted effort to prevent me from winning the race (and to launch their top runner into a huge head start). It was pretty clever, really, now that I think about it. I don't think I'll ever know if the strategy they employed on me was designed by their coach (if so, shame on him) or was concocted by the team itself without his knowledge. I've written before that one of the things I liked best about running was that cheating wasn't rampant, and that I believed (in my naivete) that no one would cheat. But, as I become more of a threat to win races, teams would target me. And that's just what the home team did. Here's how it came down:

The first mile of the Adams-Friendship cross country course was relatively flat, with some sandy spots. We started next to the football field, and within the first 200 yards we entered a very narrow single-track trail in the woods. That narrow trail was surrounded on both sides by thick undergrowth, including some brambles and other thorny bushes. After about a mile, the trail became wider, first into double-track and finally back out onto the open grass near the football field. Given those facts, and their knowledge about them, the runners from Adams-Friendship did this: at the gun, all 7 of their varsity runners bolted full-speed for that entrance into the woods. And I do mean full speed, as in suicidally-fast, as in anyone starting a 3 mile race at that pace is bound to slow down and therefore you usually wouldn't try to keep up with them, knowing that you'd pass them easily at some later point in the race. So, there I sat in 8th place, content to let those idiots blow themselves up, not realizing what was in store. Duh.

Of course, they weren't just running stupidly. They had a plan. Their number one runner, Larry Massen, was a big, strong kid who always started races a bit fast, so he didn't mind jumping out of the gate. And the rest of them were going to make sure that Larry had a good head start on me and the rest of the field. As soon as we hit that singletrack in the woods, they formed a tight pack and slowed WAY down, allowing Larry to run off the front by himself. All of the rest of us were stuck behind the other six guys, who had gone from running sub-5:00 per mile pace to something more like 7:30 per mile pace. In fact,they had slowed so dramatically and so quickly that I had run right into them, and of course received a sharp elbow to the ribs in rebuke.

There was a moment of panic for me in those woods. I wanted to win the race, but there I was pinned behind six guys whose only task was to keep me from passing them, and I was blocked on both sides by the spiny thicket of underbrush. Up front, the top Adams-Friendship runner had already disappeared up the trail, around the bend, and out of sight. On top of that, because the pace was so slow, every single runner behind me was bunched up and bumping into each other and clipping heels. We were lucky we hadn't all fallen down in one tangled mass. This was no good! This was unfair! But, of course, they had executed their plan to perfection and it certainly looked like I was going to be thwarted.

Well, not so fast. When the normal approach to a problem doesn't work, you have to improvise. All right, so I couldn't get around these guys by simply running faster than them, because there was no room left on the trail to pass. The only options were to try to push through them (let's see, six against one, not very good odds) or to go around them (and rip some skin off of my legs in the bushes). In a split second, I chose the latter approach. I took a deep breath, and made my move, crashing into the edge of the trail and elbowing my way past a couple of guys. They quickly realized what was happening, and tried to accelerate to prevent me from getting in front of them. They were also throwing elbows and one dude even reached out to grab my jersey. At this point, I was so hyper on adrenaline that there was no way they were going to stop me. I elbowed back wildly, and I literally slapped the dude's hand off of my jersey, then I leaned in hard and forced my way back onto the trail in front of that pack, bouncing off of one of their guys a couple of times in the process.

All of this took a place in maybe the first 3-4 minutes of the race, but it had seemed like forever. I immediately took off at full gallop after the leader, who was still out of sight. Post-race, my teammates told me that once I had made it past that pack of blocking runners, they began to splinter and other runners started squirting through, but that the Adams-Friendship guys made sure that everyone had to work hard for it (and take a couple of elbows too).

I ran the next mile too hard, but in the process I caught and passed Larry Massen and moved into first place. I started to relax, when suddenly Matt Klecker ran right up onto my shoulder. I'd been thinking that maybe Terry Connors would move up, and I was confident I could out-kick him, but I was surprised to see Matt there. The thing about Matt is that he had several older brothers who were excellent runners, and I think he understood strategy and tactics better than I did. After the race, he told me he just let me do all of the work to break up that pack and also to run down Larry Massen. He sat just behind me and relaxed, knowing that I would be wasting a lot of energy and planning to beat me during the last half-mile of the race. But I had other thoughts: I was not going to let him pass me, and I was going to make one last, long push to the finish that would take the kick out of his legs or I was going to die trying. So I put my chin down and put the hurt on both of us. It worked. By the time we emerged from the double-track, I had enough of a lead to hold to the finish.

The team had won another race, although not in as dominating a fashion as we had hoped. Perhaps that was a good combination for us: we felt the reward of success, but couldn't feel over-confident or complacent knowing that our competition was breathing down our collective necks.

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