State Mile – More

Lap 2 of 4

The first lap was way too fast so I knew I had to give some time back on lap two, but the entire field appeared to be in front of me. How was I supposed to have faith that most of the field in front of me was going to die? My racing times were better than all but two of them, but they weren’t running like they belonged behind me, and I wasn’t so sure either. It was all irrelevant because my body was screaming at me to slow down. I had to ease up or I wouldn’t finish the race, but good grief, I was thinking that the second lap didn’t feel much slower or take any less effort than the first lap.

I think I passed one guy on the back stretch, and I thought him to be a sensible fellow. When I came into the final straightaway of lap two the crowd was roaring for the pack of runners in front of me. The cheering sent a jolt of adrenaline through my body and I was tempted to pick it up and pass a couple guys. That is always a crowd pleasing move, to pass a guy in front of the stands. I didn’t like showing other kids up in front of their parents, and I didn’t want to let the crowd influence my run. It was more important to maintain my pace right on the edge of oxygen debt. I wasn’t going to let them goad me into doing something stupid, like running too fast just to placate them. I maintained my pace and place right where I was.

As I approached the start/finish line for the second time I no longer cared what my split time was. The guy yelling splits to us would be calling out two-something for the half mile time, but that was useless to me. I needed to know what my time was for the second lap, not for the half-mile. If I’d miss-estimated the pace I could either pick it up a bit, or slow it down. Sure, all I had to do was the arithmetic, but I knew from past experience that the arithmetic was impossible given my current distractions.

I was too busy and didn’t have as much as a second to do the arithmetic. I was running furiously in order to catch up and pass some guys as they died during the third lap. The mental and physical effort of forcing my body to run faster than it wanted to go was all-consuming. It was important to mentally monitor my breathing and my lungs and adjust my pace accordingly. I had to constantly yell at myself to keep the pace as fast as I dared lest I cut myself some slack. There was strategy to consider. I had to be careful not to pass on curves. I had to be careful not to get boxed inside. I had to watch out for elbows and back-kicks. My worries were overwhelming. Later on I’d learn from Coach Wilkinson that the second lap was a 67. I continued to wonder if anyone else was hurting as bad as I was.


Lap 3 of 4

During the third lap I continued to persevere. I was encouraged to see several guys dying worse than I was and passed them on the backstretch. It pleased me to see that all was not lost. At least I would not be last, but the pace still seemed fast to me. Krantz and Dennis were still leading the pack, and were “only” 30 yards in front of me. Yeah, if the queen had balls she’d be king. Thirty yards was a long way out front in the Mile. On the positive side, I had run in lane one for the entire race. All the guys between me and the leaders had been jockeying around for position and had often run in lane two on the curves. Maybe they’d wasted themselves with too much fiddly fooling around. Maybe.

At the end of the third lap the man was there calling out split times once again. As I said before, it was useless information. I was too tired to think straight and the time was irrelevant. I was doing what I could and if the third lap was too fast or too slow it didn’t matter. There was only one lap left and there was no opportunity to adjust the pace based on the split time. It was time to get going. I knew there would be no slowing down unless my body rebelled against me.

Wilkinson later told me the third lap was a 68, but I didn’t know that at the time. It was a sensible time given the insanity of the first lap. I had doubts that I had anything left to give, but I was determined to give whatever I had on the last lap. The possibility of failure continued to haunt me. I simply HAD to finish in third place AND run faster than 4:24.

State Mile – The start

All of my thoughts during a Mile are generally vulgar, profane or scatological in nature. The Mile isn’t a tea party where we say, “Please, after you.” Or “No, I insist, you were here first, after you.” The real truth is I want to rip your head off and blow boogers down your neck cavity. Every profanity I’ve ever heard occurs to me during the violence of a Mile race. That’s not me normally, but that is me during a Mile. Fortunately, every ounce of energy is focused on completing the distance. There is no breath to be wasted on speaking. No one can hear my vulgar thoughts, and that’s a good thing. Mom would be disappointed in her son.

So don’t be surprised at the obscenities that roll through my consciousness during the Mile. What you should be surprised at is how relatively tame my obscenities are. I’ve cleaned them up quite a bit for this blog, but wanted to include a few of them so you have a feel for the event as I experienced it. Simply put, the Mile is a violent act perpetrated by me on myself, but encouraged and abetted by those stupid sonsabitches who have the audacity to run front of me at any moment in time. If they’d just slow down it wouldn’t hurt me so much.


The Start

When I was standing in my lane waiting for the race to start I looked around at the other guys. Only a few of them were wearing decent running gear. Most were dressed like I was. My shorts and my shirt dated back to the 1950’s when my high school was first founded. I’d recognized my running gear in the pictures of the old-timers in the hallway trophy cases.

The running shorts were anything but short. They nearly came down to my knees. The shorts were made of a shiny red material that looked too much like satin. I thought they might be mistaken for women’s underwear or pajamas. My running jersey was heavy and must have been made of wool. It scratched and itched so badly that I only put it on just prior to the race start and removed it immediately thereafter. I felt like Old Stew-Ball, the racehorse, amongst a herd of thoroughbreds.

The underappreciated old racehorse was a self-image I’d fostered over the previous year while running 1500 miles in preparation for this race. Being a little bit angry helped manage the misery of running alone in the extreme weather of summer and winter. Even though I was physically punishing myself during all those miles, I mentally felt like I was punishing or “showing” all those who’d slighted or ignored me over the years.

I was aggravated that the newspaper focused on the “ball” sports and ignored cross country in the fall, and only covered the sprinters during the track season. I was angry that my classmates generally didn’t know I was a distance runner, and those who did had scant appreciation for the level of dedication required. I was hurt that only my family would ever bother to see me race. I was bothered that cheerleaders and the “In Crowd” went to football and basketball games, but never to one of my sports.

While I knew what I had achieved in the advanced classes at school, in the concert choir, in the church youth group, and through running, I felt overlooked and underappreciated. Yeah, I had a chip on my shoulder. And so there was a fair amount of anger and bitterness I’d accumulated over the last three years of running that I was prepared to unleash during this race in a fit of controlled aggression.

So there I was standing in lane 4, wishing I could have gotten to the bathroom one more time, with an extra guy in my lane on my outer shoulder, and the starter yelled, “Take your marks!” We all leaned forward to hold still and the gun went off immediately after he yelled “marks!”, and I thought “Asshole! You didn’t even make the sissies hold still for a lousy microsecond! Sonofabitch!” I was left standing there.

It wasn’t because I was caught napping. It was an unusually fast gun, especially for the Mile, and frankly, I am slow. I was still a skinny scrawny puke back then, not like the impressive hulk/hunk that I am today. (In my dreams) When the gun went off I went out hard because Coach Wilkinson wanted me to keep in contact with the leaders. Regrettably, the genetic cesspool I was born with didn’t include the gift of speed. Even though I’d started extremely fast for me, by the end of the one curve stagger I was in the back of the pack and dangerously close to last place. I might have been last but I didn’t dare look back to find out for sure.

I thought, “Oh crap, oh crap, oh CRAP! Wilkinson is going to kill me!” But there wasn’t anything I could realistically do about it. I was going as fast as I dared without all-out sprinting, and there was way too much distance left before I started that nonsense.

High school kids are generally full of adrenaline during the first lap of the Mile and can be found zigging and zagging through traffic, changing lanes suddenly, wasting energy with sudden movements, and causing all sorts of misfortune. Being next to last wasn’t such a bad place to be as it was safe, but I would never convince Wilkinson of that; not that I had a choice in the matter. Since I was Dead Flipping Last, or close to it, there was no urgency to move from lane four into lane 1. I took the whole backstretch to move over the four lanes. Still running way too fast, and still not catching anyone, I was thinking, “Assholes, what the HELL are you DOING?”

At the end of 220 yards I could see Krantz leading the pack into the beginning of the curve with Dennis close behind. There must have been 13 guys between us. I was easily 20 yards back already. I thought “If these guys can keep up this pace I am doomed. This has got to be 4-minute Mile pace. Am I unprepared? Has everyone else taken their workouts up a quantum leap that I can’t reach without me knowing it?”

I refused to get wrapped up in the adrenaline rush of the first lap. The adrenaline can make you run too fast and put you in oxygen debt. Sometimes the adrenaline can screw you up on the first curve and the back stretch, and then when you get in front of the main straightaway and the bleachers for the first time, everyone yelling for you gives you another jolt of adrenaline and screws you up a second time.

I heard my dad yelling for me as I came down the front stretch toward the start/finish line of the first lap, but I did my best to ignore his encouragement. Well, not exactly true. I welcomed his encouragement and support. Whenever any of my teammates would yell, “Pick it up, Tom”, I refused to take it literally. What they meant was to encourage me. They didn’t mean for me to literally pick it up. I was running the race. I was the horse and jockey. I knew exactly the fitness level of the horse and how he was feeling. That moment was not the time for emotional highs and feverish efforts. There would be an appropriate time for that later. The first lap was the time to run like a seasoned professional, running on logic, not on emotion. Pace was the key. I translated their exhortations into, “Run smart, Tom. Run smart!”

During the Mile I felt there was a right way and a wrong way for everything, and I was extremely particular about the way split times were called. That is just a kind way of saying I was an irritable SOB during the Mile. As I approached the end of the first lap I could NOT hear the official reading split times. “God BLESS the dumbass sonofabitch!” This was the state meet. Can’t they do anything RIGHT?

With the crowd roaring it was already difficult to hear. The official was facing the track and calling out splits every second at a right angle to our approach. As we approached the starting line we couldn’t hear the man. The only person who could hear him was the runner passing by directly in front of him and essentially shouting in the runner’s ear. If you happened to pass by between two seconds, you might miss your split entirely. If the dumb-butt would face down the track and call out splits as the runners approached, we would hear his cadence, would know the splits of the guys in front of us, and would have an excellent approximation of our own split as we crossed the line, even if we didn’t hear the man. It was yet another piece of consternation and anxiety in a day already chock full of them.

I got lucky and heard 62 seconds as I went past the start/finish line. “Geez-SUS, (emphasis on the second syllable) Crap, and many bad words!” I don’t run the first lap of my 880 yard (half-mile) races that fast! A 2:04 is my fastest half-mile time. My legs were already starting to feel stressed and I was breathing hard. “They CAN’T keep this up. I can’t keep this up. I cannot run this pace and finish.” Again I wanted to yell “What the HELL are you Dumb-ASSES doing? You are screwing up a perfectly good Mile race. You are screwing up MY Mile race. Do you realize I’ve spent an entire year preparing for this race and you guys have already SCREWED-UP the PACE?”

The only consolation to my screwing up and running a 62, which was much too fast for ANY of us, was that everyone else had screwed up worse than I had. The only guy who had the brains and balls to run a smart race was the guy behind me, and I wasn’t altogether sure that there WAS anyone behind me. Surely Coach Wilkinson would read his stopwatch and realize that I was running a relatively smart race so far. It was a mighty small consolation.

Seeing what appeared to be the entire pack in front of me generated buckets of anxiety. I’d like to say I was calm and sure of what I was doing, but that would be a monster-sized lie. What if I misheard the split? What if I misjudged my competition? What if I am having a bad day? This is supposed to be my greatest achievement. What if it turns into my greatest debacle? “Oh crap, oh crap, oh CRAP!”

State Mile – Perspective

I believe I was a normal teenage boy in at least one aspect, which is to say I was pumped up with whatever chemicals God naturally pumps teenage boys up with, making them goofy as hell. It is unfortunate that while all these natural chemicals were making me goofy as hell, I was at the same time completely inexperienced at dealing with my condition, and also completely unaware OF my condition. So while it may not have been right, I do remember what my mindset was at that time. In my mind the stakes at the state track meet were enormous. The stakes weren’t inherently enormous; I’d made them enormous.

I am not saying my logic was right, or that any logic was involved at all, but I had decided that this race was a test of who I was, and who I was going to be. Even though I’d run plenty of races before, this was my final high school race. There would be no opportunity for redemption at a later race. I had to do well in this race, or I was a failure; a failure as a teenage boy, a failure as an athlete, and possibly destined to be a failure as a man. If I failed at this race I knew that I would have to live with that failure for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life dwelling on my failure to perform.

All of the top guys in the Mile either knew each other, or knew of each other. We’d met each other at big meets throughout the year, or knew of each other via the times listed in the squint print section of the newspaper. I have no doubt the other guys were scouring the sports section every Sunday like I was to see who had run a good time the previous day.

Realistically, I knew I wasn’t going to beat David Krantz from Waterloo Columbus. Krantz had the fastest times in the state and had not been beaten once all year. While I’d beaten my good friend from Manchester, Dennis Schultz, at the district meet with a 4:25, it was a rare and random event, and we both knew that Dennis was the only person who might get close to Krantz. I would be fortunate to be third as the kid from Marshalltown had beaten me once, as had the kid from Dubuque and the kid from Des Moines Dowling. If I didn’t run a new personal record time, I could easily end up sixth or worse.

Since I’d finished fourth the previous year, success was defined as finishing third; exactly third. Finishing higher than third wasn’t possible and worse than third was all too probable; third-place was an iffy proposition.

The state meet was my first and only opportunity during the spring track season to race unencumbered by fatigue. There was a full-day track meet every Saturday throughout the season. Usually there was also a dual meet during the week on Tuesday. I’d have to run the Mile and 880-yard run at each meet, with only an hour’s rest between the two races. There were full workouts on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday would be the only day of light running, and I typically ran alone on Sunday while the rest of the team was sleeping in. The state meet was the only time I had an entire week of light workouts in preparation for a single event. The week was designed for an exceptional performance.

So the state meet was a blessing in that I would get to run the Mile fully rested and fully prepared, but it also had an ugly flip side. It also meant I had no excuse for failure. I’d decided I would be a failure if I ran a poor time, or had a poor finishing place. Either one would be construed as a failure. There would be no excuse handy for a failure in either time or place. I wasn’t tired from the previous week’s workouts. I wasn’t sick. I wasn’t injured. I had no excuses available to me. The pressure I felt was enormous and it made basic functioning difficult.

How so? Let’s digress into the basic facts of racing life. It’s an ugly truth, but no matter how many times I visited the bathroom prior to a race, I always needed to go one more time. Even in the most low-key races I was so nervous that I continually needed to hit the bathroom. My gastrointestinal system was doing all kinds of unpleasant gymnastics.

I wasn’t the only one afflicted. I never found a bathroom that didn’t have a line out the door. Upon arrival at track meets everyone raced to locate and use whatever bathrooms we could find. We never told opposing teams where bathrooms could be found. Distance runners did longer warm-ups, and so were able to find locations that sprinters weren’t “able” to locate.

Standing in line for the bathroom just tired my legs out and increased my anxiety level. I was always worrying that I might be missing my event while standing in line for the bathroom. Track meets are notoriously unpredictable, usually running hours behind schedule, but occasionally would whip through several events in a few minutes. So standing in line made me nervous, and the more nervous I was the more I needed to go, and, well, I think you can see the dilemma.

Anything I foolishly put into my mouth the day of a race was processed in the most casual and cursory manner by my digestive tract. Sometimes I was so nervous I couldn’t digest a thing, and simply vomited up whatever I had just prior to the race, or after the race, or both. Items that could be eaten in the morning of a race were professional secrets amongst distance runners and shared only with the closest of friends.

Given the stakes that I’d imposed on myself, I was surprised I wasn’t more nervous than I was. Sure, there was some anxiety, but not like normal. Sleeping well the night before and sleeping during the drive that morning had kept me from obsessing about the race. I wasn’t conscious, so I couldn’t obsess. It was great. Claiming to have thought this all out in advance wouldn’t be fair. It was just a fortuitous side effect, but I was glad of it.

The Mile was the first event of the afternoon. My district time put me in lane 4, David Krantz in 3, and Dennis Schultz in 2. I think we all had a second guy in our lanes as I remember the race being extremely crowded. It was a common practice in those days.

Next week, The Race.

Car Keys, Part 1

It was the first and only time I can recall intentionally disobeying my parents. It was May of 1970 and I had just graduated from high school. Mom was so gentle and kind that I hated to disappoint her, but Dad was such an authoritarian that it seemed right to be willfully disobedient at least once before heading off to college. And that’s how it came to pass that I stayed out past curfew on the night before the high school state track meet.

When I got back to the house that night I just expected to slip in the back door like I always did and head up to bed. Mom and Dad would never know because the door was never locked and they never stayed up for me anyhow. There was no reason to do so because I never stayed out late, I never disobeyed, and was absolutely trustworthy. Well, except for this one night. When I got home the door was locked.

At first I thought that Mom and Dad had just forgotten I was out and did not intentionally lock the door. When I checked for the spare key in the garage and it was missing, I knew it was locked on purpose and they were upset. I thought about sleeping in the car, but decided that that was just delaying the inevitable. I rang the doorbell and awaited my fate.

It seemed to take forever, but eventually Mom and Dad both showed up at the back door in their bathrobes. Dad took forever unlocking the door and it seemed calculated to let me stew a little longer and speculate on my impending doom. As soon as the door opened Dad started in on me. I don’t remember specifically what he said, but no doubt it included my being irresponsible and risking a poor performance at the track meet the next afternoon. I was accustomed to my dad’s tirades, but this one was particularly stinging because he might have been right this time. Even more painful however was my mom’s look of disappointment.

The bottom line of it all was I was grounded until further notice and they took away my keys to the car. This was a first for me or for anyone in my family.

In my own defense it wasn’t just an evening of willful disobedience. I was pretty anxious about the state meet and knew I wouldn’t sleep well, if at all. I’d been training for this one track meet for an entire year. The previous year I’d finished fourth in the Mile at state in a 4:25. One of the guys in front of me was a graduating senior and the other three of us were juniors, so if I was going to move up a place, or just maintain my place in the pecking order, it was up to me to do the workouts. The problem was this; I was positive the two guys in front of me knew this too. They didn’t get in front of me by sitting on the couch. No doubt the guys behind me had placed a bull’s-eye on my back too.

I’d run throughout the previous summer in preparation, even after a full workday or graveyard shift at the factory. I’d run two-a-day workouts frequently during the fall cross country season. I gave up my one true love, wrestling, in the winter when I separated my shoulder during a JV match, and it became clear I wasn’t going to make the varsity. So I focused on running through the ice and snow of winter with my separated shoulder, again, often twice a day. Every reasonable and unreasonable sacrifice had been made over the period of a year in anticipation of this one race. In fact, my girlfriend had dumped me just prior to the track season both years. Gee, I wonder what caused that.

So getting back to losing the car keys and getting grounded, I went up to bed and slept like a baby. Whodathunkit?

I had to get up early the next morning and catch a ride with an assistant coach who was driving me and a couple other guys over to Ames, Iowa, the site of the track meet. I was still a bit sleepy from my “late” night, so slept during the two hour drive over to Ames. By the time we got there I was well rested and felt ready to run.



I just reached the bottom of a page. You’ll have to wait for the rest of the story next week. I won’t actually get to the end of the car keys story for five weeks. I have to tell the story of the State Mile race first to put everything in perspective. Hang with me. It’s a good story.

Teaser

The next six weekly posts will be about running the Mile and 880 (half-mile) at the 1970 Iowa High School State Track Meet.  You are right to wonder why I would spend so much time, and so many words, on a single event. I continue to wonder the same thing. Once I started writing the story I could hardly stop, so it is apparently important to me. Though the topic might sound odd, if you stay with it until the end you will find it’s a pretty good story, in particular how I lost the car keys, and how I got them back.

Looking Back

The unexamined life is not worth living – Socrates (470 BC – 399 BC)

It only took a moment back in May of 2009 to pick the title for this blog. It didn’t take a lot of deep thinking. I’d originally intended to write-up some stories about the kids while they were growing up, and a few more about my days on the planet. Obviously the blog would be reflective in nature with a lot of “Looking Back”. As a lifetime runner this title had an amusing subtext that non-runners might not catch.

Back in 1967 the first thing my high school running buddies taught me is that you never, ever, look backwards during a race. Looking back is a sign of weakness. It tells everyone behind you that you are tired and concerned about maintaining your current position. It says you are slowing down and want to gauge how much slower you can run without getting caught by the next guy behind you. Looking back immediately makes you a target for everyone behind you. You suddenly become the weakest zebra in the herd that the lions target for their dinner. That’s what looking back means to a runner.

But back to the topic - I’ve always enjoyed the Socrates quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. It focuses on the individual, whereas the George Santayana quote, “Those who cannot learn from History are doomed to repeat it”, has an implied focus on the world. The two quotes are, by their nature, reflective and say the same thing to me, that there are things to be learned by looking back. There are things to be learned not only from your own personal history, but from the history of others and countries as well. Thus I justify recording a little family history here in this blog for my descendants.

So Looking Back is the right title for my blog; Looking Back on the life of my family, Looking Back on my life so far, and Looking Back on my running career. Its a few moments spent reviewing the experiences we all have in common, and perhaps one or two that are just a tad bit different.

But I don’t intend to live my remaining days just Looking Back. There is much to live for. 

I want to:
See what my kids do next
See what my grandkids do next
Ride a train across Canada during the fall leaf season
Ride the Bernina Express train from Chur, Switzerland to Tirano, Italy
Eat at Nikolai’s Roof one more time
See the Northern Lights – aurora borealis
See a NASA launch first-hand
Drive across the Golden Gate Bridge
Drive across Royal Gorge Bridge in Canon City, Colorado
Drive through the Florida Keys
See a glacier
Spend a week at Caribbean beach cottage
Spend a night at the Yellowstone lodge
Attend church service at a cathedral
See the Sistine Chapel
Experience the Fourth of July in Washington, DC
See the US NE
See the US NW
See the US SW
Tour the Louisiana Bayou country
Visit Harry Truman’s birthplace and presidential library
Visit Dwight Eisenhower’s birthplace, and presidential library
Spend a week at Topsail Island during the winter
Learn to do a flip turn in the pool
Swim a mile
Take an aerobics class
Get in incredible shape
Run a marathon
Clean the garage
Clean the attic
Build an enclosed back porch in place of the deck
Take a Windjammer Cruise in the Caribbean
See the Rockies
See the Badlands
See Montana
See Rome, tour the Vatican
Learn to fly
See the Grand Canyon
Tour several of the Smithsonian Museums in DC, Air and Space in particular
See Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome
Catch a sunset from Waterrock Knob in the Great Smoky Mountains
Visit Gilman, Iowa
See Disney World’s Epcot Center, if it still exists
Create a great yard without extensive hired help
Write the world’s greatest blog
Win my age group in an Atlanta Track Club race (Oops, just did that Sept 11, 2010.  Never thought I’d do that again!)

So while Socrates has a point –
The unexamined life is not worth living

I also like the knockoff –
The unlived life is not worth examining.