September 25, 1979 (Tuesday)

From running log:
Cross country practice. 1 warmup, 3 workout, 0.2 cooldown (4.2 miles). Mostly grass intervals, plus 10 hill repeats. We ran 440 yard intervals, but not super hard. My back is healing, but it's still a little sore. The annual T-Bird Handicap is tomorrow (yeah, that'll really help an injury!). I think Ben's team is the best (I am on McGann's team). I just heard that Coolidge ran a 15:44 3-mile split in his first CC race for UW-Oshkosh, impressive. I sat in the whirlpool again.

30 years later:
The annual T-Bird Handicap was an intrasquad race. The coaches had designated Ben and Moose as team captains, and then let them choose up sides. The race would be scored like any other cross country race, with a twist. The coaches had determined handicapped starting times; that is, runners would start at pre-determined intervals over about a 10 minute span of time. The handicaps, if they had been correctly calculated, would result in all of us hitting the home stretch more-or-less together. You can make the handicapping formula as simple or as complicated as you want. But the scoring would be done just as if it was a regular race: first across the line was first place, period, no matter what that person's head start had been.

Races like this can be kind of fun. As the number one runner on the team, I would be starting dead last, nearly 7:00 behind the first starter. My task would be to catch up to and then pass every single runner out there, boys and girls combined. The team captains had to take this into account. For example, would you want me on your team, knowing that some of the girls had a head start of nearly one mile on me? Shouldn't they be able to hold me off over the final two miles? And what about some of the other varsity guys, who would have a head start of a few minutes, determined by recent race performances? Shouldn't they be able to stay ahead of me?

To be honest, I don't remember where I was picked, but I know it wasn't first. I think that Ben and Moose first chose some of the younger, hungrier runners from among the girls and the JV boys. It would seem to make sense to get some runners on your team who were going to get a head start. Plus, I had missed the last race due to an injury, would you trust me to be one of your top runners, having to come from behind?

I wonder if they still have a similar race these days. I remember it fondly. It was clearly a way to create new bonds across the team, because we'd be pulling for everyone on our team to run well, because essentially they all had a shot of crossing the finish line first and winning this particular race.

I noted in my running log that my frequent training partner and old teammate Todd Coolidge was running well in college. I was impressed by this, but also a bit motivated for two reasons: (1) if he could do it, so could I, after all, we weren't that different in terms of how hard we could run in training, (2) I have to admit that I was competitive about Todd, maybe not as keenly-focused on beating him as he was on beating me, but I still wanted to be faster than him, if only for bragging rights.