Cross Country RACE. At the Tomah Hiawatha golf course. 0.5 mile warmup, 3 mile race, 0.3 mile cool down (3.8 miles total). Cool, breezy, 45F. I hit the halfway mark in 7:42, then finished in 16:00 and first place! That takes me into the conference meet undefeated and with the best time. Look out Connors, Bennett, Klecker, and Boehm. I'm going for it next Thursday, all-out from start to finish. Crary and Ben ran well today, McGann was a little tired, Nellie re-injured his stomach muscle. We need to have everyone running strong next week. Boehm got 2nd today, and he and I simply ran away from everyone else. Will it be the same next week?
30 years later:
As our final rehearsal for the conference meet, things could not have gone much better. Well, I guess maybe it could have been 5 degrees warmer and no wind, but let's not get greedy. I recall that Jim Boehm and I just ran away from the field, we had our own race while everyone else had theirs. I was feeling strong and ready.
Perhaps strategically, the Reedsburg team held their number one runner Matt Klecker out of this race. In his stead, Jim Angus had run a very strong race, much to our surprise. We'd never considered him a threat, but here he was with a huge improvement and right before the conference meet. Someone else to worry about.
In the same way, our own Todd Crary had run a great race, and now he had to be making the other teams worry about him. Likewise, Ben had done his best time of the year. We were all closing in on a peak. Perfect.
I know that this blog is about the boy's team in 1979, but let me just take a moment to recognize Dori Helms for winning this race for the girls and in the process setting a new course record. We all loved Dori for his unbounded enthusiasm, and we all found it entertaining that she would cheer her lungs out for the boy's team, screaming out the kind of things that she probably told herself when she was racing, such as "Don't stop now, you're almost there" or "I know it hurts, but you have to keep going". In comparison to the few others who would yell only encouraging platitudes ("Lookin' good", "Way to go"), Dori's inner-psyche-specific utterances were both unique and strangely motivating. She was a good runner and a good teammate, and her strong running that year should not be over-looked. She was the bubbling good girl in counterpose to her teammate Shannon Sophie's bad-girl persona, but together they were a great one-two punch to their competition. Our girl's team had a good shot at winning their conference meet too.
In those pre-internet days, when full results simply weren't available anywhere except on someone's clipboard, I'd often take 10 minutes post race to copy down the complete slate post-race, like this:
The article from the BNR, with quotes from Coach Briscoe (I guess he was finally feeling more comfortable in his role, after nearly a season and by being a part of all of our banter and focus). He was certainly clued in on the fact that Portage would be our competition ... and we hadn't faced them head on all year long. The stage was set, we had one week to go:
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