Running with the Buffaloes

by Chris Lear

  The practice is competitive, and Reese is not too happy that his team is falling back. “I’m in debt, dude,” he says halfway through, “I just ran three hard.” Unhappy with his teammate’s effort, he yells after her,

  “Come on, Gruia! Try!” Batliner is also already whipped, and thinking of his minuscule recovery he says, “I don’t know if I want Bri to go faster or slower.”

  Wetmore is not impressed. “Come on,” he yells, “you guys should be barfing by now.” He is especially vocal, and he addresses individuals as they get ready to set off. He yells to Reese, “Come on, Tommy, reach down! Time to roll up the sleeves,” and to Goucher, “Reach down.

  Where’s Lagat? Look at Lagat! Think of Rim Rock Farm, you gotta sprint when you’re tired!”

  Despite looking like she ran to the death, Faz is not victorious, but she is relieved not to have finished last. The Maggots actually finish second to the Dung Beetles–Burroughs and Valenti. Ponce was leading into 198

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  the last one, but, already exhausted, he could not hold his position. After trudging home on the last one, he says, “I didn’t have shit.”

  Tomorrow is another medium distance run, but everyone is already dreading Friday, when they will run their last session of repeat miles this year — on the track.

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  Wednesday, November 4, 1998

  Balch Gym

  4 p.m.

  Skeleton Dreams

  Jason Robbie is back at practice. He is recovering from surgery on his IT

  band and is set to start running in the pool today. Already Captain Skinny before the surgery, he looks positively malnourished now. Every muscle in his left leg is atrophied from his quadriceps down to his ankles. The muscle loss is accentuated because of the swelling in his knee that has yet to subside since the surgery. If ever there is an infomercial for starving Norwegians, Robbie will be a plum candidate.

  He grabs Batliner to see if he, too, is going for a pool run. “I don’t know,” says Bat sarcastically. “Let’s just kick each other in the face for ten minutes and go home.” Misery loves company, and today they have a crowd; Goucher is joining them.

  Not surprisingly, Goucher is fussy about going to the pool, but he sees no other option. Even running around Kitt for 40 minutes is not an option because by doing so he will not be resting his leg. If he is going to run, he figures he might as well go to the Tank with the others. He elects to go to the pool because he thinks that a day off (God forbid) might give his leg the recovery it needs to get well.

  At pool’s edge, he reconsiders. “Oh man,” he says, “I don’t know if I want to do this.” He jumps in. Bat, Robbie, and Gouch run in the deep end of the diving area. Women on Stairmasters look down at them from behind black tinted glass overlooking the pool, and a high school diving team ignores their presence in the diving area.

  After only 30 minutes, Goucher has had enough. “If you’re going to advance your fitness, or get any aerobic benefit out of it, you gotta work hard, and I’m just not in the mood.” He starts feeling guilty about his ab-breviated pool run, but then he reconsiders. “At least I did something. I didn’t take the day completely off.”

  Batliner is out a few minutes later. He had thought of calling it a day, but then he decides to jog for 30 minutes around Kitt. He wanted to run the Tank, but he skipped it fearing he would be doing too much. “What sucks right now is I’m so tentative,” he says while jogging around Kitt.

  “The last time I felt like this, [five weeks ago] I couldn’t run without a limp three days later. I feel like a pussy.” He should not. It is commendable that he is able to heed his own advice — “Have the courage to rest.” Twenty minutes into the run, his leg starts to ache, so he calls it a day. Now is not the time to risk injury.

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  Batliner hopes to extend his discipline to the dinner table. Wetmore has put him on a 2000-calorie-a-day diet. Batliner is down to 138 pounds—

  six pounds over his racing weight — but he needs to lose more. He says Wetmore told him, “Don’t go eat Village for breakfast and have your 2000

  calories ’cause then you’re screwed, you can’t eat anything all day.” Batliner went anyway this morning, getting the number five over medium.

  After which he says, “I ain’t eating shit till dinner.” It is only a couple of hours away . . .

  In Wetmore’s opinion, the emphasis on weight is not overrated.

  “Leanness is underrated,” he says. “I tell people, ‘Go look at Track and Field News. See what those people look like. You should look like a skeleton with a condom pulled over your skull.’”

  While Goucher, Batliner, and Robbie were in the pool, the men

  quickly get down to business at the Tank. They ran the full Tank —12.5

  miles — in a blazing 1:17. For Friedberg, it was a “good steady pace,” but Roybal emphatically disagrees. He fell off early and tried in vain to catch them on the way back. He tells Friedberg, “I was running my fastest on the way back and I couldn’t catch you assholes. I thought I was catching

  [you], but it turned out to be a bunch of overweight women training with a personal trainer.”

  Ponce is not laughing. “My shin is hurting,” he says, “really bad.” The complaint is alarming considering his pain threshold. He is not one to cry wolf. Against his better judgment, he stayed with the leaders the whole way. “I was trying to take it easy, but it’s hard to do that and go faster . . .”

  Pride, it seems, can cause more pain than any natural obstacle.

  Milers on the track are two days away.

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  Friday, November 6, 1998

  Potts Field

  4:30 p.m.

  Down

  Repeat miles on the track. Wetmore’s men have been anticipating this workout since August. Each previous session of “milers” has led to this.

  One final session, in spikes, on the track, flying! In years past this workout has served as the barometer to demonstrate the progress they have made since the beginning of the season.

  The women will start the workout around 3:30 p.m., and the men will start as soon as the women have finished so that each group receives Wetmore’s undivided attention. The conditions have hardly been worse all season; it is a brisk, cold afternoon, and the wind is howling. By the time the men arrive at the track at 4 p.m., the women are finishing the last of their four repeat miles. Heather Burroughs, CU’s number one runner, is pulled before the fourth interval. With the exception of Carrie Messner and Lesley Higgins, the women are way off their projected times.

  The sun is beginning its descent behind the Flatirons, increasing the late afternoon chill. As the women finish, a discouraged Wetmore turns to the men, and says, “Men are up in six minutes.” At 4:15, they begin the session with their first of six repeat miles with a scant two minutes rest in between. Their target times are as follows:

  Goucher 4:26

  Friedberg 4:40

  Reese 4:40

  Roybal 4:40

  Ponce 4:44

  Batliner 4:44

  Johnson 4:46

  Valenti 4:46

  Batliner is in spikes and shorts on the side of the track as they head around the first turn. He can see his own breath, and he feels the wind rolling westward. “I’m sitting the first one out,” he says, “which makes me wonder why I put my spikes on and took my pants off.” It is too late to bother with the hassle of dressing and again disrobing. He takes off down the homestretch to keep warm.

  “Let’s run the first one two seconds slow,” Wetmore tells them. “It’s a warm-up.” Into the first mile, Goucher battl
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  labors as he passes with a lap to go. Wetmore senses his distress. “Come on Gouch, control, control!”

  He finishes five seconds slow, in 4:31. Friedberg, Reese, and Roybal come across in 4:44 — four seconds slow. Ponce and his aching shin hit the line three seconds behind them, in 4:47. Valenti and Johnson run 4:50, also four seconds too slow. At least they are consistent.

  They jog slowly around the curve past the water pit to the hundred meter mark before turning and shuffling back towards the start line. No words are exchanged, and as they reach the line, they have only twenty seconds longer to recover before the second mile. They set out knowing they are off pace, but despite their best efforts, the second mile is worse than the first. Goucher scratches and claws his way to a 4:30 mile. Valenti is off the back; he trudges home in 5:06. Wetmore has seen enough there.

  “Chris V,” he calls to him, “you’re done.” He does not object.

  The Junior Varsity watch their teammates by the finish line. They catch Wetmore’s controlled wrath. He does not yell at them so much as pronounce in a tone of voice that says, “Listen, or else.” He glares at them and says, “Don’t stand around getting cold, you got a race tomorrow.

  Get outta here!” They waste no time filing out of the gate at the track’s entrance.

  The sun has almost completed its inglorious descent. The temperature drops precipitously. Goucher fights the elements, fights Lagat, fights Mwangi, fights time. He cannot get ahead. It is not for lack of effort. He comes through the half in 2:16 — three seconds slow. His respiration is audible as he barrels down the homestretch. His lungs are desperately seeking oxygen that simply does not exist in the Rocky Mountain air. With each lap, his respiration is louder. He slows to 4:34. Before today, Goucher had not missed his splits in so much as a single workout. Yet, on this interval, he is eight seconds slow. The other also miss their targets. Loud enough for Wetmore to hear, JD says, “God, that one was a disaster.”

  JD turns to Wetmore as they head around the turn and asks, “Does Gouch always breathe that loudly? You can hear him from 50 meters away.” Wetmore looks straight ahead in silence before acknowledging,

  “He’s hurting today.” But Wetmore does not budge. Halfway through a workout where not a person has met their goal on so much as a single mile, Wetmore does not relax the standards he has set.

  One hundred and twenty seconds have impossibly passed since the third mile. Wetmore admonishes them as they get ready to go. “Come on, let’s get to work, you’re slow.” The wind has mercifully ceased. There is a dead calm as they round the first turn. Goucher raises his intensity, and it is now possible to hear him breathing an astonishing 100 meters RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES

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  away. Despite his best effort, he hits the half in 2:15. “Come on, stay on it,” says Wetmore.

  Goucher finishes in 4:34. Friedberg pulls away from the pack and runs a 4:41— only one second off pace. But behind him, Ponce falls farther off the pack and Johnson can only manage a five minute mile. Now, Wetmore has seen enough. He calls to them as they start to head around the first turn, “Change your shoes, you’re done everybody. Not a good day.”

  Reese and Friedberg turn around in protest. “Come on!” Friedberg pleads, hands out to his sides, “I was less than one second off!” Wetmore does not entertain his input. “Change your shoes. You’re done.” Reese starts to speak and is abruptly cut short by Wetmore, “You’re done!”

  “What’s the point in killing ourselves?” he continues to no one in particular, “We got a couple of races to run. If we’re not ready, we’re not ready. Why put a nail in our coffin?”

  Thinking of his gimpy knee, Reese again pleads his case. “I want to do this because I don’t think I’ll be able to run tomorrow.” Friedberg butts in as well. “I’ll cruise the fifth in 4:40, hopefully, then go for it.” Their words fall on deaf ears. Having skipped the first mile, only Batliner is permitted another four circuits. He hits his target pace: 4:44.

  Goucher puts on his trainers. The conditions appall him. “It’s so freaking windy out there. There’s wind on three sides of the track.” His body tenses and his voice increases in volume as he speaks. “I felt like shit out there. I had nothing, nothing at all! How the hell am I supposed to race fast if I can’t even run a 4:30 for a goddamn mile! Fuck!”

  Ponce appears shell-shocked. He speaks in a hushed, funereal voice.

  “Man, that was a tough day; a weird day. I had no energy. It was one of those days you feel every step. It kept getting progressively worse, too. I was a second slower every time.”

  They do not waste time getting away from the track. Ever since Severy’s death, the group psychology has slowly been pieced together. Now they have bombed a workout at the most inopportune time. As they leave, any synergy that exists billows like a spiderweb in the wind, threatening to lose its grip and disappear.

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  Saturday, November 7, 1998

  The Buffalo Ranch

  9:30 a.m.

  Another Casualty

  A blanket of snow five inches deep covers the cross country course. Any hope the Junior Varsity guys entertained of getting out there and tearing it up in their last race of the season vanished as Mother Nature worked under the cover of night. It snowed last year, too, and Wetmore canceled the race, to Berkshire’s surprise. “I thought for sure Wet would have us run. There could be six feet of water and he would tell us to swim five miles. [But] it was dumping. It was insane.” This year the snow is not as severe, so the race is on.

  The men slip and slide their way through the course to the end. Matt Elmuccio runs as well as can be expected in these conditions, taking home first place in 27:25, eight seconds ahead of Slattery. Despite the conditions, Elmuccio has managed to run 43 seconds faster than what he ran on this same course, without snow, on September 5th. Clearly, he is fit.

  A year ago Slattery finished fourth at the Foot Locker National High School Cross Country Championship. Sean Smith, on the other hand, was a member of the U.S. Junior Triathlon team. Today, Smith, in his first season of collegiate cross country, finishes just one second behind Slattery. Wetmore may have found his next Friedberg.

  The cold, dreary day turns frighteningly gloomy for Wetmore after he talks with Reese. Reese has kept the severity of his injury to himself all season, perhaps coming back before he had fully recuperated from the surgery on his femur. Reese could have allowed it more time to heal and started in October, but he says, “I would’ve said [to myself] ‘What a puss!

  It’s my last cross season ever and I didn’t even give it a shot.’”

  Yesterday, while doing strides, his knee started throbbing — unbe-knownst to Wetmore. Reese was able to run the milers, but by last night Reese’s knee had had enough. He says matter-of-factly, “It swelled up like a balloon. Right then, I knew three things. One, there’s blood in the joints again. Two, the cracking and clicking tells me there’s loose, cracked cartilage. That all hurts and affects the bending of the knee. But the cracked femur is what I can totally feel, and that’s what stops me. It doesn’t feel at all stable when I land, the pain shoots, and it feels like my leg is going to go backwards.”

  He knows all the data that this sensation tells him because he felt precisely the same pain before he had surgery last spring. Yesterday’s workout almost prematurely ended his season. “It was hurting just like RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES

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  this in the springtime,” he says, “then I had a workout and I couldn’t run because it locked on me. The workout yesterday felt the exact same way it did then. I think the only reason it didn’t lock is because that was a steeple w
orkout and this wasn’t.”

  Despite the pain, he has come too far to call it quits now. Reese told Wetmore the extent of his injury today, and Reese says they are both determined to “do whatever we can to get through the season.” For now, Reese will treat the pain symptomatically and tough it out. The first step is getting the blood and excess fluid drained from his knee. Reese will do that next Wednesday. If there is an upside to the injury, it is that it has happened at such a late date. “All the training’s done,” he says. “I’m in great aerobic shape. If it was a couple of weeks ago, it would be different.”

  While Reese understands why he is ailing, he does not understand why so many of the other guys are struggling to survive the training intact. “He [Wetmore] believes in training a lot of mileage. Lately, people haven’t been able to handle that, so it takes away from his ideal program.

  What sucks is that we’re having injury problems off of low mileage.”

  Because he did not have the mileage base that his teammates acquired during the summer, Reese has thrown everything he has into the workouts. All season he has endured off days where “It’s been a struggle just to bop along. I just go eight minute miles, and it feels like there’s nothing in my legs. I’ve tried to do strides sometimes on Thursdays, and it’s just no faster.” Until Nationals, Reese will rest completely instead of trot-ting on his easy days. He hopes this will allow him to coast through the few remaining workouts.

  Yesterday, essentially, was his last hard effort. While initially he was,

  “super-pissed,” that Wetmore cut it short, he feels better about it today.

  Initially, he says, “I didn’t like it. I felt I was going to make up the difference on the last two. I think I could’ve rolled one of ’em in 4:29, 4:30. But I don’t think it’s necessarily necessary to get all that in, especially since I don’t have a base.”

  As captain, Reese is also concerned about what the team is thinking.

  Now he thinks Wetmore made the right decision in prematurely ending yesterday’s mile repeats, and more important, that the team agrees and that the synergy they have struggled to rebuild is intact. “It is,” he admits,