Williams XC Alumni Race

I was going to start this post with some comment on heading back to the Purple Valley of western Massachusetts to relive my collegiate running glory days. But, looking back 15+ years, there really wasn't much glory, or at least not as much as I dreamed of when starting my freshman year in the fall of '99. Back then, the possibilities were seemingly limitless. I was joining a successful Division III program with countless stories of mediocre high school runners becoming stars under our coach's tutelage, and naturally I thought I'd be next in line. In reality, I was perhaps a bit too mediocre and a bit too injury prone to become more than a back-end varsity cross country runner. In other sports, I'd have been called a role player or a journeyman; in XC, I was a 4-5-6 guy (i.e., 4th, 5th, or 6th scoring position on the team).

But while my dreams came crashing down to earth, I nonetheless developed a strong bond to the Williams XC program (at least in part because it's how I met my wife!), and I've since made the trek back to Williamstown for the alumni race ("Aluminum Bowl") as often as possible. This year would be my first time running the race since 2014, and I was pumped to get back out on the course. The course itself has gone through several reinventions since my time there, changing out of necessity as the local high school (where it's hosted) has modified first its playing fields and now its footprint. Despite some changes to the flow and layout, the wooded, hilly trails have remained the same, making it a classic and challenging XC course.

This year, the alumni race would be the only event of the day, making for a nice, low-key atmosphere with a focus on team and camaraderie across graduating classes. There were 50+ alums in attendance, though only a few from my era. We prepped with the requisite pre-race bear toss (Note: you can read about this odd tradition here) and then slotted into our starting spot on the line. The area we'd been assigned was quite narrow, so I got into the third row next to my other "old man" teammates and waited for the start. All of the current team's runners were also on the line, with most planning to do a workout on the course while the rest of us raced. The team is quite large (nearly 70 runners between the men and women), so there was the possibility of some chaos over the opening meters.

Pre-race photo of Williams XC alums in attendance.

Off the line, I got into the slipstream of my former teammate and captain, Dusty Lopez, now the assistant coach with the team (and host to my family during our weekend in town). Dusty was an outstanding runner at Williams and is always in good shape, so I figured I could do worse than stick with him during the race. We picked our way through the mass of runners that converged on the path around the playing fields to start the first mile. A few minutes in, he turned to me and said something to effect that I am the only person he wouldn't mind losing to. I took this as permission to pass and got ahead of him, hoping he'd hang with me and pick off a few more people together, something I was never fast enough to do with him while we were in school.

Opening sprint off the line. If you look really close, you can see a tiny bit of red from my hat above Dusty's head on the far left of the image.

The course heads up a hill and into the woods at ~0.75 miles, and this is where I needed to focus. I had decided to forgo my ankle braces because the trails are mostly well groomed, but a few rogue roots were waiting ahead to wreck my day should a misplaced footfall hit one. I had to slow some on the downhills out of necessity but otherwise was able to run fairly normally in this section.
At the mile mark (~5:30), I was in around 8th place. There were no studs in the race as there had been in years past, when the winners would run in the low-15s on this challenging course, so I could still see the big pack of leaders maybe 10 seconds ahead. The second mile contains the toughest terrain, though it starts modestly, continuing on the rolling trail that spits us out next to the high school's grass (!) track. It then re-enters the woods where the real fun begins. There is first a relatively short but steep hill, followed by a steeper downhill, then a gradual build to the crux of the course, a long (0.3 mile) hill that is revealed only after a nearly hairpin turn, and even then the top doesn't come into view until you've falsely summitted two other times. Finally, there's one last (very) steep downhill that gives back all of the elevation just gained and marks the end of the trail portion of the race. Through all of these undulations, I passed just two people but managed to hold my position and put some distance on those behind me.

The third mile is entirely on grass, crossing fields, the track, and some small rises, culminating in a variety of loops around and between the soccer and baseball fields where the race started. I was closing in on fifth place, a tall, younger runner, during the first part of this section. As I passed my coach, he yelled "Way to be in shape, Garvin!" which was surprisingly motivating. I used the surge of positivity to pass the young guy but couldn't shake him. A few hundred meters later, he passed me back and looked poised to hang on. I had no idea where the finish would be in this version of the course, and when I saw that we still had another turn and then a long straightaway, I decided it wasn't too late to reclaim 5th. I pretended to be running an all-out 200 on the track, and that little mental trick worked like a charm. I passed the guy back 50 meters before the line and held on for 5th overall, 3rd alumnus, in 17:05 (final mile 5:06). I later learned that the guy I passed was the 5K school record holder (14:17!) from the class of 2015 who clearly has not been training as seriously. Still, that was a bit of a confidence boost.

A younger version of me running on our home course in 2002. 

Afterward, my coach asked me to help him organize a kids' race, which consisted of my kids, Dusty's kids, and my classmate Tim's kids, as the other alumni in attendance were too young to have reached this phase of life. The kids mostly had a great time, though Maisie broke into tears midway when she realized that she wouldn't win. That's the competitive spirit I like to see in a four-year-old.

A few days after the race, I came across an article on my college coach, who's celebrating his 40th year at the helm of the program. There were two passages in particular I liked that really capture the spirit of love for running that he instills in the team:

"Pete has a true love for the sport, and that spirit is the foundation of our team's approach to running. In the midst of NCAA championships, technical workouts and complex training philosophy, GPS watches and heart rate monitors, Pete helps us remember that we run because we love to run. We love trails, we love working hard and we love our team." 

Farwell's end goal isn't to see his athletes compete well now, but rather to see them running and enjoying running years later. "The goal is for you to be running when you're 30, 40 or 60 rather than to run two seconds faster in the 5k when you are 21,"