20 years ago: Part I

If you know me well, then you know that I often can't remember where I put my keys or why I walked into a room but can instantly recall splits from a random high school track race that happened 20 years ago. However, it wasn't until mentioning this to a friend recently that it occurred to me those memories were actually 20 whole years ago. I also realized that there are details from those days that I remember only with some effort, and even then I have doubts as to their accuracy. This is a long way of saying that I promised myself I'd write these things down before it was too late and they were gone forever.

So, welcome to the first of somewhere between one and many installments of my brain-running archive project. This and the three that follow will delve into my junior year outdoor track season of 1998, which seemed magical at the time and still contains some of my most vivid memories and countless experiences that shaped me as a runner and person. (I even wrote my college application essay about one race in particular.) If this all seems somewhat self-indulgent, it's because it is. There's nothing here that will seem special to anyone besides me; our times weren't particularly impressive and there wasn't any off-track drama or historically significant event that shaped the season. But it was the biggest thing that anyone on the team had been part of to that point in our lives, and I don't want to ever forget it. With that introduction, let's get started.

Part I: March-April 1998

Expectations
The New Paltz High School boys track team had reclaimed the league championship in 1997, my sophomore year, somewhat dramatically avenging a dual meet defeat against Onteora. That meet - the Mid-Hudson Athletic League championship (always referred to as MHALs ) - had historically been the big meet of the season, and success at meets beyond that (Sectionals, States) was rare. However, that previous season, we had qualified three athletes for states, with one winning the shot put and another placing 2nd in the pentathlon. (That same pentathlete was also our best 800 runner, the league XC champ, and a starter on the football team!) Both of those guys had graduated, so while we knew we had some depth, we weren't guaranteed the same level of success in '98. But our coach was unflinchingly optimistic, and we had the naivety of youth on our side, so we came into the season expecting greatness.

Personally, I'd made big jumps from 9th to 10th grade in both the 800 (2:11 to 2:03) and 1600 (5:15 to 4:40), placing third in MHALs in both (as well in as the 3200), so I headed into the season hoping to build upon those gains and a solid XC season.

 

Our team was always strong in the distance events, and this season would be no exception. We'd won our league XC meet with 23 points and returned three people (me plus seniors Ryan and Josh) who'd placed top-5 in the three distance events at last year's league meet. Outside of that, there were a few standouts mostly in the field events and a bunch of unknown entities. The team was big (66 kids, or roughly one of every four boys in the school), so like every high school team everywhere, we hoped to pull a couple of scorers from the unknowns. The pre-season talk was always about how so-and-so had won the gym class mile in 5th grade and was finally joining the team, or how some other guy was a state finalist shot putter in Indiana and had just moved to the district. Those stories almost always turned out to be false, but we had some signs that this year would be different.

There were three promising newcomers on the team. The first was a bear of a freshman who apparently dominated middle school throwing events. The second was a junior who excelled on the football field and wrestling mat and would be throwing the shot. And the third -- Billy Moore -- was a transfer from a neighboring district who scored points in the 200 and 400 at the league championships the previous season. We were historically weak in the sprints and would take anyone we could get to score a few points. In retrospect, it is clear this team would not have reached the heights it did without even one of these three additions.

March - Getting in Shape
The first month of the season was one of transition for everyone on the team. We didn't have an indoor track team, so everyone was either coming off another winter sport (I, and many other distance runners, had just finished the nordic ski season) or several months of doing nothing. We were a pretty pathetic group for the first couple of weeks, hobbling around with sore bodies every time our coach adding a new pace or plyometric to the regimen.

Based on my training log, I had a rough go of it in March, getting sick for a week and then injuring the bottom of my foot during practice and having to take a week off from running. Fortunately, I was young and back at full speed a week later. Our mileage was always very low (never more than 30 in a week), so no gradual ramp up was required.


April 2nd - 5th: Opening Meets
For the distance runners, our first test was a timed mile on April 2nd. I ran 4:54 and finished ahead of our distance star, Ryan, last year's league mile champ, by 2 seconds. One of his senior teammates, Josh, finished another second in arrears. The times weren't great, but I recall being very happy running sub-5 so early in the season.

Our first meet -- The Panther Relays -- was three days later. This was always run in terrible early Spring conditions -- cold, windy, often rainy. We'd all stay huddled in tents, and only a few minutes before our races would we emerge to brave the elements. Our school record books were filled with weak relay times, so we'd be making an attempt at the 4x1600 and DMR records at this meet, despite our early season fitness. We succeeded, running 19:32 and 11:20, both of which we'd lower substantially in a month. I ran 4:51 in the former and 3:26 (1200) in the latter. I wasn't thrilled with either but knew the speed would eventually come. As a team, we placed second to Pine Bush. After that loss, we would beat more than 100 teams before we lost again.

My calves were sore for a week from running in spikes, but, this being high school, there'd be no time to rest, as another meet awaited us the following Tuesday. We faced off against Rondout Valley on our home track -- an asphalt-like surface on which spikes were not allowed. We won 109-31, for the first time getting an idea of the team's potential. I won the 800 (2:07) and 1600 (4:49), but more impressively, our freshman threw over 140' in the discus, our transfer ran 53 in the 400 (already equaling his PR from the previous year), and our 400 hurdle state qualifier ran 58.9.

April 6th - 18th: Spring Break and a Surprise PR
We had 11 days off from racing for Easter break, which gave us a chance to ratchet up the training intensity a bit. We did track intervals - 12x200, 200/400/600 ladders, 8x400, etc. - nearly every other day, trying to get our speed where it needed to be before the important meets started.

On the other end of this block was the Tri-Valley invitational in the Catskills, which was always a good chance to run against competition outside of our league. My first event was the 800, where there was a stacked field led by an absolute stud of a runner from the host team. I latched on to him as long as I could and ran a surprise PR of 2:00.9. My season goal was to break 2:00, but I never imagined I'd come so close so soon. My coach gave a great quote in the newspaper following that race: "If Chris had known that he was this close to breaking two minutes he would have sprinted the final yards." Believe me, I would have sprinted regardless of my time; I was simply dead!

The stud who won was also victorious in the 400 and 400 hurdles at the meet, running an incredible triple of 50/56/1:58. I placed third in the 1600 in 4:47 later in the meet, finishing just behind my teammate Ryan. As a team, we took the meet title over Pine Bush, a powerhouse program from another league in our section. There were more other great performances from Billy in the 400 (51.5), Matt in the 400 hurdles (58.0), and our high jumper Dash (6'3").

April 21st - 25th: A Very Busy Week
We followed this meet with the classic only-in-high-school three-meet week. Knowing that we'd win the dual meets easily, our coach backed off the volume of racing we'd do. We won the first against Saugerties 108-32; I ran 4:40 in the 1600 and cruised the 3200. We also took the second against Marlboro 104-32; I ran 2:06 in the 800 in "cold, rainy, very windy!!" conditions, according to my running log.

We capped the week at the Monticello Games, another meet that always seemed to be run in terrible weather. If it wasn't raining, it was windy, and that was the case again this time around. In my log, I described it as "extremely windy and a little chilly." I ran 10:27 in the 3200 (a PR for me) for 6th place, 2:07 in the 4x800 for 2nd place, and 2:06 in the open 800, also for 2nd place, behind a guy from Goshen who would become my rival and nemesis a little more than a year from that day. We won the meet as a team, despite no real standout performances, and our coach noted that made us 68-1 on the season, having only lost in the opening invitational.

Write-up on Monticello Games with hand-written note from Coach P. C

April 28th: A Statement
We finished our month with our fourth meet in 11 days. This was our most important dual meet yet, as we'd go head-to-head with Wallkill, our neighbor just down the road, and our likeliest competitor for the league title. The meet had a championship feel to it, and was even run under the lights on our home track. We strategically arranged our lineup to challenge them in their best events while running our second-stringers in the events we were likely to dominate (including the 1600 and 3200).

The second event of the meet was the 4x800, where I would run the anchor against Wallkill's top guy (who happened to have been one of my best friends in pre-school, 13 years before that). He got the baton with a big lead, maybe 50 meters ahead, and I immediately went to work tracking him down. He had taken it out hard, and I did the same, running a first lap of 57. He was a stronger 400 runner, and I remember noticing his posture change after the hard opener, indicating a possible chink in his armor. My pace had slowed as well, but I motored on and made a bold enough pass that he couldn't muster much resistance. I finished my leg in 2:00.6, well ahead of my old friend, setting the tone for the rest of the meet.

Astonishingly, I have no record of the final score of the meet (I vaguely recall it was 80-something to 50-something) or notes of anyone else's performance. I do have one other vivid memory from that day, and that is of the meet's final event, the 4x400. Even with victory in the bag, pride was still on the line, and our rapidly improving squad of quarter-milers was looking forward to challenging Wallkill's top-ranked team. Our guys were pumped and ran exceedingly well. By the time Billy got the baton on the anchor leg and sped off the around the track, we'd gapped them by ten seconds - an eternity in the 4x400. As he reached the final straight, he unexpectedly slowed down to a jog, looking behind him as he waited for the other anchor. Was he hurt? Tired? Making some strange gesture of sportsmanship? Nope, he was toying with them. He waited until they caught up, and then, fully rested, put the dagger through their heart with an all-out sprint to the line. It was a highly unsportsman-like move and put a damper on the whole evening for our team. It also foreshadowed a moment a month later that would simultaneously be the most thrilling and disappointing moment of my entire running career.

A look ahead
The team had made enormous gains to this point in the season. We dominated our league meets and held our own against some competitive teams outside of the league. But the best was yet to come. A shocking move to put our star 400 meter runner, just a few days after his 4x400 debacle, into the 4x800 would raise the team's competitive level to something never before seen at our school. All this and more in the next installment...

Really interesting contemporary article. Amazing how much things have changed since then.