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On Monday, Seth Godin, one of my favorite bloggers, wrote the following post entitled Run Your Own Race. (If you click on the title you will link to the post.) When I coach track, I often remind athletes to "run your race." Here is the story regarding how that advice became significant to me.
I attended Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. I chose it because, it was about a 90 minute drive from my home in Baltimore, was a small college where I could get involved in a lot of things, and had a history -- at the time -- of producing some very good runners.
The summer before heading to F&M as freshman, I had spent a lot of my free time running with another incoming F&M freshman Steven Levin -- Baltimore friend and one of the top runners from Maryland that year -- basically trying to push each other as hard as we could. We gradually worked our daily mileage up close to 10 miles a day. We also met once a week on the Gilman School track and ran 4x800m -- don't ask me why -- as hard as we could. There was very little rhyme or reason to what we were doing. We just wanted to be a significant part of the team when we got to Lancaster.
When we arrived at our first team meeting, Coach Bill Iannicelli spoke to us and then our team captains spoke. The captain who made the biggest impression on me was Mike McGrath. Mike told everyone in the room, that he believed that we ought to win the conference and qualify for the Division III National meet that fall. Mike was quite earnest about this goal. But I walked out of the meeting feeling that this goal was beyond this team. Other than Mike, the other captains and upperclassmen -- although great guys -- seemed to have different agendas. Although the talent was there to accomplish the goal Mike set and we did well as a team -- losing only once and qualifying Steven Levin as an individual for nationals -- our team neither won conference nor qualified for nationals in 1981.
Mike, though, did create a real drive in me to accomplish this goal of winning conference and qualifying for nationals. To me the allure of making it to nationals became a bit of an obsession. My high school athletic achievements were modest. I saw qualifying for nationals as being a vindication of my drive, determination and toughness. I was convinced that through a lot of hard work and our team coming together that we could do it.
Throughout my sophomore and junior years, I became increasingly determined and willing to work as hard as I could to accomplish this goal. During the summer before my sophomore year, I experimented with 100 + mile weeks of running. I unfortunately came into the cross country season dead legged after that, and it took me most of the season to get my bounce back. During the summer before my junior year, I decided to work at F&M all summer so I would have access to the colleges facilities and my familiar training routes. That was the first summer I started training systematically.
One of our assistant track coaches, Art Harrington, had been a successful cross country coach at Solanco High School in the late 70's and early 80's producing some of the best runners in Pennsylvania. He introduced me to the Oregon system of training. In the summer training program Coach Harrington wrote for me, I would complete a three week repeating cycle of easy week, medium week, hard week. It was not just about running lots of miles. There were elements of speed work and lots of change of pace work and a weekly hill workout. As the summer went along I could feel this system working for me like no other training I had ever done. I became a much stronger and faster runner.
When I returned to school, I was quickly running my best times ever over 5 mile cross country courses. I was almost a minute faster on our home course. Where my friend and teammate Steven Levin could typically beat me by 50 seconds to a minute in previous years, now I was much closer to him. I felt my determination and hardwork was paying off. But best of all, we had a really good team.
Two new freshmen, Greg Whorral and Greg Skaff, had joined the team and were immediately running strong times and a sophomore, Jon Toso -- who had had a mediocre freshman year -- returned in shape and could run with me if not beat me. With such a strong top 5, we won our conference and we qualified for nationals as a team.
I don't remember ever being quite as excited about anything as I was about qualifying for nationals that November. The NCAA was going to pay for me to fly with my friends and teammates down to Newport News, Virgina to run in the National Championship race.
The National Championship race was hosted by Christopher Newport College in Newport News and the race took place on a pancake flat golf course. We flew into town on Friday and went to look at the course. The weather was perfect - 50's and sunny. The course was dry. All we could think about was how fast the race was going to be. I had run around 25:40 for a hilly 5 miles in Pennsylvania. On this flat course, I thought all I had to do was finish and I would definitely be under 25 minutes. I also had my eye on one other mark -- that was finishing top 25. The top 25 finishers were recognized as All-Americans.
I decided that I had to get out as close to the lead as possible and hang on as long as I could. This was about the stupidest decision of the weekend because that strategy had never worked for me. Each runner has their strengths and weaknesses. Some are really quick starters and some are really quick finishers. I was best when I ran as close to even pace as possible and tried to make a move in the second half of the race when the fast starters tired. The one strategy that never worked for me was to go out fast and hold on. But for some reason I convinced myself to do that.
There was one moment, when I almost changed my plan. Tom Donnelly, the coach from Haverford College, was actually the last person to speak to me before I went to the line. He was standing near where we were dropping our sweats and he said in a very calm matter of fact voice, "Patrick, just run your race." Those words have haunted me ever since.
Every cross country race begins with a sprint that typically lasts between 200 and 300 yds and then runners settle into their pace. Since my strategy was to hold on as close to the front as I could I decided to maintain my sprint until I saw the leaders. The race having a flat first mile and a talented and very excited pack of runners, the pace went out faster than I have ever experienced. I hit the mile mark around 4:38 and felt no where near the front. I heard later the leaders had passed the mile at 4:26. To run my fastest first mile in a cross country race ever, be no where near the front was a discouraging feeling. In the second mile I started to struggle.
Even though I was struggling in the second mile, others were too and we passed 2 miles at 9:50. But that was when my early gamble started to unravel. I got one of the most severe side stitches ever. These are relatively common for beginning runners but I had not had one in a race for years. I realized I would have to stop to get rid of the stitch.
When I stopped I laid down on the ground next to the course. I still remember vividly looking up at the perfectly blue sky. It was then that I realized how stupidly I had run. I looked up at the sky and said to myself I had blown the chance I had trained for since I entered college. I had even had Coach Donnelly tell me to "run my race" -- not someone elses -- as I went to the line. But I ignored all warnings and tried to run someone elses race and now I was lying on the ground considering quiting.
It felt like I was lying there several minutes, but it might have been 30- 40 seconds. Several people ran by me and asked if I was OK and I mumbled yes. Finally someone ran by me and said "you better finish because the NCAA does not pay for your trip unless you finish the race and your coach will be really mad." I later found out this was false, but I got up and finished the race.
If you want to see how I did, you can go to the following link 1983 NCAA D-III Cross Country National Championship Results . I wasn't last (although close to last) and I certainly wish I could still run as fast as I did that day today. But it was a lot slower than I was capable of at the time and disappointing still to this day.
I have re-run this race in my head more than any other race I have ever run. And it all comes down to what Coach Donnelly said to me as I headed to the line. I should have "run my race." I think if I did, I would have finished in the top half of the field that day. No that wouldn't have been All-American but it would have been very respectable. My foolishness also cost our team at least 60-70 points in the scoring. That would have gotten us several places higher in the team standing instead of a lowly 19th.
But this saying "run your race" has in many ways become a metaphor for me. If you looked at Seth Godin's blog post, he describes a long distance swim race he took part in that had a very similar ending to the NCAA race I participated in. Ego forced most of the field to swim too quickly and exhaust most of them with several hours left to swim.
I love the middle part of Godin's post:
"If you are going to depend on your competition to bring out your best, your going to surrender control over you most important asset. Real achievement comes from racing ahead when no one else sees a path -- and holding back when the rush isn't going where you want to go."
This past Tuesday, I got to attend my first cross country race of the fall. Our cross country team always competes off campus and my responsibilities in the fall keep me on campus most of the time. So I do not get to see many races. As I watched the runners go by, I thought I hope they learn to "run their race." In order to do that they have to really know themselves and appreciate what makes each of them different and unique.
You would think the lesson I learned from my opportunity to run at the National level in November 1983 would be that hard work pays off. I had set a goal to get to nationals and worked really hard to accomplish it.. Certainly that was true. But the lesson that stays with me to this day is that if I get overly focused on others, I lose sight of what is special about my efforts. Sometimes the crowd will decide to behave in a certain way and the best response for me is to ignore the crowd and just "run my race." That's not an easy lesson for adults to learn let alone adolescents. But I hope the kids I work with will.
