Running

Throughout my life I have had a love/hate relationship with running. In more recent years this has trended toward hate. High school was easily the pinnacle of the "love" side of the spectrum, which also extended into college. (It is amazing how this also corresponds to the time in my life when I weighed ~125lbs.) Since then, I can honestly say the results of running I definitely love, while the act itself is tantamount to fingernails on a chalkboard.

In the 9th grade, I was suckered into joining the track team by my friend Josh Davis. It seemed like a great idea. I would spend afternoons with friends, and I was pretty fast. What could running a few sprints hurt? After about two days of working with the sprinters, it was clear that I didn't have the short-twitch muscle structure to be a viable sprinter. It was then I was "traded" to Coach Domek and the middle/long distance runners.

Apollo High School Track & Field Team; 1989-1990

My Track Photo; 1989-1990

Talk about hurt. Every workout sucked. Ladders. Sowbellys. Long runs. Fartleks. Horrible. I have never in my life experienced a runner's high. At best, there was a time when I could put my mind in a different place and not really feel anything. Most of the time it was just anguish to me. By the end of that first year, I was a miler and had run my first sub seven minute mile. (This is not good.) By the middle of my second season I was running the mile in the 4:50s (this was good, but at the time we had three other runners faster than that). I quit in the middle of that season because of consistent, recurring  shin splints (there was actually a fissure in my tibia).

That next fall I was talked into joining the cross country team–like track except longer runs and races were on a field (often a golf course) rather than the track. Cross country was more fun than track. The head coach had a different personality than the track coach, which made things better. Also, running on the grass was much easier on my legs. In the three years I ran cross country I was never great. I think I ran my best 5k in about 17:40(ish), which again was good, but not even close to the top runners.

Apollo High School Cross Country Team; 1991-1992

I never ran on an organized team after high school. I have run some races since those days, generally doing pretty well in my age group. One year I ran the North Country 10k in Walker, MN. I won my age group and as a prize I was given a bird house and a jar of jam. 

In summer 1997, I ran my last races (most likely forever). My buddy Josh Davis, who I mentioned earlier, were both working at the YMCA in St. Cloud that summer, and we decided to get into really great shape. In addition to lifting huge weights on a daily basis (and quoting the movie Pumping Iron while we did that), we also decided to begin a running routine. To make sure we followed through with this, we also signed up for 3 races (a 10k, 5k and 1-mile). 

I won my age group for the last two of those. The 5k was the absolute worst. We were both hung over and I don't know how either one of us made it through that race. The one-mile race was in St. Paul, and after we ran that race we had to walk back to our car (we had stupidly parked near the starting line). En-route back to the car, a parade was passing by and Norm Coleman waved at us. We both waved back and then gave him the finger.