Running with the Buffaloes Read online

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  reer will be judged by how he performs today. Ready or not, showtime is about to begin.

  As 250 men bounce, fiddle, and stretch, hoping, by God, just to get this thing started, Wetmore barks final instructions to his runners. “Gentlemen, you’ll hear no splits, and you won’t see any mile markers. You’re running by feel. Pay attention to your sensory data.”

  No splits? This angers the Buffaloes, particularly Mike Friedberg. “I was pissed,” he recalls. “I just knew they weren’t going to be able to give splits because that’s the way things were run out there.” Hearing this now rattles him nonetheless. With only five minutes until the start, Friedberg is losing his shit. Nicknamed “the Iceberg” by Wetmore early in the season for his unflappable temperament under pressure, his fears are getting the best of him.

  Jay Johnson, another fifth-year senior, senses Friedberg’s anxiety, and he tries to settle his nerves. “Don’t worry about this,” he says. “This is fake. Everyone’s full of shit. What’s real is Magnolia Road, what’s real is milers out on the course.” No one has traveled as long a road as Johnson to get to this moment. A veteran of two prior NCAA cross country championships, he never expected to race in another. He has run the last eight weeks thinking each race would be his last; but he performed just well enough in each instance to prolong his season. Like the others, he has endured under the most trying of circumstances, and because of this, he is able to put the race into perspective for Friedberg when he needs it most.

  Friedberg internalizes Johnson’s counsel, and to a certain extent, it works. But still, doubt lingers. Just a year ago he was a Junior Varsity runner, a walk-on nobody from the Park School in Baltimore, Maryland—

  hardly a recruiting hotbed. Now he is being counted on to be up at the front, contending for All-American honors.

  It’s go time. They nod and slap hands with one another, wordlessly expressing their hopes, their prayers, and their brotherhood. Ninety-four days and thousands of miles since they convened at Kitt Field on an 88-degree afternoon, they await the starter’s call. All that remains is thirty minutes to “man up” and take the pain, one last time. They are not afraid . . .

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  CHRIS LEAR

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  Tuesday, August 18, 1998

  Balch Field House

  3:15 p.m.

  94 Days to Lawrence

  The CU cross country team gathers for the first official practice of the year. The men and women form a large circle in Balch Field house, while fifth-year senior Tommy Reese, last year’s cross country captain, leads the team in stretching. Matt Elmuccio, a sophomore miler from New Jersey, is back on campus for the first time. He has had the best summer training of his life in his hometown of Westfield. He has sprouted a robust red goatee during the summer. Coupled with his thick auburn hair and two-foot-long rat’s tail, his is a distinct appearance. He is tan and fit, and his calm demeanor as he stretches suggests he is ready to work.

  Opposite Elmuccio, Adam Goucher stretches quietly. While many of his teammates spent the summer training together in Boulder, he elected to spend the summer in his hometown of Colorado Springs. He performed odd jobs at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and worked at a dog track in order to make enough money to pay his bills this semester. In spite of the fifty-hour workweeks, he trained arduously. Rising most days at 6:30 a.m. to run, he increased his volume quickly and steadily. Last Friday, in Colorado Springs at an elevation of 7500 feet, he comfortably ran a five-mile AT (anaerobic threshold) in 25:43, in the midst of a week in which he ran 95 miles in singles!* His training is right on schedule.

  That same Friday afternoon at Potts Field (the University of Colorado outdoor track), CU teammates Chris Severy, Oscar Ponce, Brock Tessman, and Chris Schafer also ran a five-mile AT. They were joined by Steve Slattery, a hot-shot freshman who just rolled into town with his family from New Jersey. Sporting a sleeveless Mt. Olive T-shirt, he had a fresh tattoo of the cartoon character The Flash on his right shoulder.

  After passing two miles in 10:40, Slattery pulled off the track.

  Hunched over with his hands grasping his shorts, he looked up and said,

  “I feel like crap. I thought I was in shape, but that was tough!”

  Welcome to high altitude, young man.

  * “In singles” is a common term in Wetmorespeak. He is not overly concerned with volume. Wetmore places greater value in how much mileage you do running once a day. A Lydiard disciple, he stresses the greater physiological benefit of running, for example, 70

  minutes in one run as opposed to two runs that total 70 minutes. Goucher and his teammates all set out to meet their summer volume goals running once a day.

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  The others pressed on. Severy and Friedberg ran 26:30, and the others filed in ten seconds later. After a long summer of distance runs up and down Boulder’s trails, they too showed they were ready to get to work.

  Inside Balch, the mood is calm and relaxed as Wetmore strides around the inside of the circle, checking to see if the runners received their equipment and have had their physicals. MaryBeth, the team’s equipment manager and assistant throws coach, enters the circle to have a quick word with Wetmore. As she approaches, Wetmore introduces her, and jokingly tells the squad, “Be real nice to MaryBeth ’cause she’s in charge of all the stuff.”

  It is a lot of stuff. The university has a contract with Nike, and each runner receives a pair of Terra Humma training shoes, cross country racing flats, track flats, shorts, long and short sleeve T-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts, and even wristbands and a headband. It is a far cry from Wetmore’s undergraduate running days at Rutgers University in New Jersey, when in the fall of his freshman year, the equipment manager gave him used training shoes that formerly belonged to another member of the squad.

  Everything is in place. All of the runners have received their equipment and their physicals. The only glitch is with Wetmore’s personal order. Nike has mistakenly sent him soccer shoes for the third year in a row. This in-convenience does not bother Wetmore, and will not affect his running in the least. He has not missed a day of running in over nineteen years.

  The stretching circle is fairly divided in half, with the men on one side and the women on the other. As they stretch they talk quietly among themselves in groups of two to four, catching up on their summers and such. All are dressed in running shorts and T-shirts, with the exception of freshman Steve Slattery, who wears his old red and yellow Mt. Olive T-shirt with cutoff sleeves and basketball shorts that extend to his knees with boxers poking over the waistband. Various upperclassmen are already placing bets on how long it will be before Wetmore starts ribbing him about the shorts, and when he will start wearing running shorts.

  Asked the previous Sunday by Jay Johnson, “Steve, you run in boxers?!”

  Slattery shrugged and nonchalantly replied, “Yeah, my whole team did in high school.” Reese shook his head and said, “Damn, even with my little junk, I still need some grippers to hold my shit together!”

  Done stretching, the team departs the gym and jogs for two miles down to Kittredge Field (Kitt), a flat, grass athletic field with a half-mile cir-cumference. The runners gather and stretch lightly again while Wetmore divides them into three groups for the day’s athletics. The men are doing anywhere from ten to sixteen loops of Kitt with a 200-meter pickup at

  “cross country race pace” on each lap. The women’s workout is identical, the only variable being the number of repetitions. The runners do this workout by feel rather than time, and none of them check their watches 6

  CHRIS LEAR

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  to monitor their pace. Assistant coaches Jason Drake (referred to as JD

  by
all) and Lorie Roch set out cones to demarcate the 200-meter segment where they will do their pickups.

  All the runners take off at once, and immediately Goucher grabs the lead, heading around the first corner. The first two groups of men pass the mile in 5:40, and everyone looks good. This is Wetmore’s first opportunity to see the fruits of summer training. He eyes his runners very carefully as they circle the field, noting who is running easily and who is laboring excessively.

  Slattery runs next to Elmuccio, his predecessor as King of New Jersey prep running. While obviously laboring as his chest heaves in search of oxygen, Slattery still captures Wetmore’s attention. “Look at him,” he says with the admiration of a veteran horse trainer admiring the gallop of a promising colt. “He’s got a big, powerful stride!” Slattery gobbles up ground as he runs, taking one stride for Elmuccio’s two. Despite their Jersey roots, the two are a study in contrasts. From Elmuccio’s short, clipped stride and reticent demeanor to Slattery’s gallop and brash countenance, the two are polar opposites. What they do share is an intense rivalry born in their prep days, and this first workout is just a prelude for the battles to be waged between the two throughout the fall.

  Ten minutes in, the first group is rolling, with Goucher, Batliner, and Friedberg up front. Wetmore leans in as they pass. “Careful what you’re doing, Flagstaff tomorrow.” The comment is aimed at Friedberg, a Junior Varsity runner a year ago who is determined to run with the big boys, and it is in reference to Wednesday’s thirteen-mile run up and over Flagstaff Mountain. In the agonizing first 30 minutes from Balch gym to the trail summit on Flagstaff Mountain, the runners will climb over 1400

  feet. Wetmore’s words help keep their ambition in check, and the workout from escalating out of control.

  Six loops in, Wetmore pulls Slattery and junior Ronald Roybal. Running his first 65-mile week in over a year, Roybal is healthy, but not fit. To Slattery, Wetmore says, “Enough for today. Welcome to 5000 feet.” Slattery catches his breath before responding, “I got this funny taste in my mouth.” Wetmore smiles and says, “Does it taste like pennies? Heming-way says that’s the taste of death.”

  The others keep running around the perimeter. Although laboring more than his compatriots, Friedberg hangs tough with Batliner and Goucher up front. His summer of training appears to be paying dividends, and at this early juncture, he appears a lock to make the squad. Nevertheless, it is a long road to Nationals. Looking to pull in the reins once more, Wetmore says as they come around again, “We got ninety-four days to go. We don’t need to show off.”

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  All the runners are done after fourteen circuits except for Goucher and Batliner. They continue on for two more. That Batliner runs with Goucher is no surprise. He is in arguably the best shape of his life. This past Sunday he ran an eighteen-mile run, wrapping up a 94-mile week that was the culmination of eight weeks of great base training. Like Goucher, Batliner is shooting to win the NCAA individual title.

  Goucher picks up the cones on the last circuit, and he and Batliner jog in comfortably, chatting. They have run 43:10 for eight miles, an average of 5:24 per mile. They have accomplished the day’s objective; a highly aerobic effort without compromising tomorrow’s run up Flagstaff.

  Reese finishes shortly after Goucher and Batliner, having run easy for 45 minutes while his mates were put through their paces. His summer training began only a week ago due to spring surgery to repair a cracked femur. At Wetmore’s urging, Reese jumps in for a 200-meter pickup and also does two 150s. Many runners in Reese’s shoes would pack it in for the season, having been unable to get in a full summer’s worth of training, but Reese is undaunted. Two years ago, he did not begin running until September 23rd due to injury. He finished the season 60th at NCAA’s, having run a maximum of 40 miles a week. A fifth-year senior, this is his last shot at collegiate cross country. Therefore, Wetmore has developed an ambitious plan for Reese. If all goes perfectly, Reese will have seven 85-mile weeks under his belt before NCAA’s this year. With that volume, and his talent, a top-twenty finish is not unrealistic. Informed of Goucher and Batliner’s time, he shakes his head. “Don’t tell me that . . . I don’t want to know. I know I have seven weeks to the [Colorado] Shootout. I want Nordberg [his nickname for Friedberg]. But don’t get me wrong,” he continues, “I want Nordberg to do well, top five at NCAA’s. I just want to be one step ahead.”

  Meanwhile, as most of the runners were finishing and warming down back to Balch, Roybal was finishing his run down on the Boulder Creek Path.

  He bumped into Jay Johnson, a fifth-year graduate student in exercise physiology who aspires to once again make the Varsity in his last collegiate cross country season. They decide to sit in the creek and soak their legs for a while. After an outdoor season where he was overweight and never “fully invested” in track, as Wetmore would say, Johnson was hoping to bang out a good summer of training. Unfortunately, a bout of mononucleosis did him in, and he is woefully out of shape. Johnson lagged even behind Roybal in the run today, but he is not discouraged. Like Roybal, Johnson has had success in the past. Most notable was his 3:49, 14:20 1500 meter/5000 meter double at Mt. SAC two years ago. Today, they decide to take things one day at a time. Johnson says to Roybal, “You know what, we have experience. We have to be calm, and we’ll run better, even if it takes to indoors.” But each wants to be on the squad that toes the line in Lawrence. They have 94 days.

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  CHRIS LEAR

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  Wednesday, August 19, 1998

  Flagstaff Mountain

  3:15 p.m.

  Like Ten Pounds of Shit

  in a Five-Pound Bag

  Those runners who failed to heed Wetmore’s advice to stay controlled yesterday are now in for an even more painful task. The men and the women are going to be running from Balch gym up to Chautauqua Park, where they will climb a single-track trail towards the summit of Flagstaff Mountain. From the time they exit the gym until they approach the trail’s apex roughly four miles later, they will not run a single step on flat land.

  In the roughly 30-minute climb to this point the run cruelly ascends over 1400 feet at a slightly ever-increasing grade. The first fourteen minutes of the climb leading up to the trailhead are not overly strenuous, but once one sets foot on the trail itself, it switchbacks hard and fast up the mountain. The rapid ascent almost instantaneously puts a runner in oxygen debt.

  The worst is yet to come.

  As the summit is approached the trail steepens so much that the runners must scamper, bound, or, if the will is broken, walk over increasingly high steps that tax your lungs and make your quads burn and quiver.

  Of the climb, Batliner steadfastly says, “You’re hurting. If you are doing more than walking, you’re hurting.” Such is the notoriety of the run’s climb that US Army runner Sam Wilbur says frequent runs up Flagstaff will transform the meekest of runners into “Quadzilla.”

  Once the summit of Flagstaff is reached (so named because of a flagstaff visible from the mountain’s base), the run levels out for a quarter mile, allowing the runners’ respiration to return to normal before they descend a fire trail that switchbacks for several miles around the other side of the mountain. The descent offers magnificent views of the surrounding aspen- and pine tree–covered peaks. The trail terminates in the parking lot of the Red Lion Inn off Canyon Road. In all, the run is thirteen miles long. Says Batliner, “The thirteen feels like eight because after you work your ass off, you coast back home.” But for the less fit, the downhill run on the creek path is little more than a dead-legged dawdle back home.

  While they stretch before heading off, Wetmore instructs them that the run is to be easy and conversational. As he says this, some of the veterans, such as Berkshire and Batliner, lower their heads and chuckle, no doubt pondering the remote possibility of ever holding a
conversation at any pace while climbing Flagstaff.

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  This is not exactly encouraging news for transfers John O’Mara and Brock Tessman, who are preparing for their first run up the mountain.

  Tessman appears anxious before the climb. Before embarking on the run he says, “Usually the guys downplay the runs, but none of the guys are downplaying Flagstaff. They all say it’s tough.” Their first Flagstaff run is a memorable one.

  The top nine guys head out together while O’Mara and Tessman

  team with junior Jason Robbie. The trio quickly loses sight of the Goucher-led main pack. Unfortunately for O’Mara and Tessman, Robbie’s IT (iliotibial) band begins aching and he is forced to turn around for home.

  Without Robbie’s trailblazing, they miss the turn onto the fire trail down the mountain. They are forced to retrace their steps after losing their way—ending back on campus an hour and forty-five minutes after their departure.

  The main pack runs Flagstaff in 1:21 before tacking on a loop around campus to make the run a full 90 minutes. Oscar Ponce is in high spirits after the run. He was dropped handily yesterday, but today he beat his previous Flagstaff best by a minute, without the effort required during his record run. Others are not so upbeat. Wes Berkshire exclaims that he

  “feels like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.” He felt fine until they added on when they arrived back on campus, at which point, “I felt like I was punched in the face. I died a thousand horrible deaths, but that’s the way it goes, I guess.”