Running the B Team: Meeting the Team

As all of the distance guys lined up to listen to Coach, I remember the heat of the sun beating down on all of us even though it was sixty-five degrees outside. But that didn’t matter now I had one thing on my mind, the ten 400 meter repeats set before me. Coach spoke up, “Ok guys, we are doing ten 400s, with 200 meter jogs in between for recovery. I want the guys who finish last to catch up with the leaders by the time you hit the next start mark Now the pace is going to be between 65-70 for the A team and 75-80 seconds for the B team. Now the B team will always be chasing down the A team in everything. That gap will always remain. The B team will always be trying harder to catch the A team.”
Those words remained in my head, I knew I was not A team material at the time, just coming off an injury and not running for several months, but I also knew I was better than B team material. I had too much heart and too little talent. As each 400 progressed I slowly faded further from the A team, and as I ran the last few with the slower guys, I knew that I had given it my all. I felt like crying, but I knew that wasn’t going to make me any faster, so I focused. Sure all of you want to hear a success story, that I ran with the A team and beat all of them on the last one, but that wasn’t the truth. The truth was that I gave it all of my heart and I still finished at the back, just another face in the crowd. And that is when I shined the most because I had the heart to keep going, the courage to face another day of running, even though running made me feel bad about myself because of the performances.
Several months earlier was the beginning of my collegiate running experience you could say. I was still unsure on how well I could perform. Sure, I ran during the summer, probably not as much as I should have but I still ran, probably 45 mile weeks. But I was still not sure what kind of times to be expecting. I had been emailing a coach at Vincennes University in regards to running cross country and track. I figured I still had some racing to complete from high school. He emailed me back telling me what kind of workouts I should be doing and how far everyday, just the basics. Well towards the beginning of August I received a letter that told me that the coach of the college quit and that we should continue running on our own.
This was a blow to my self esteem. Not once in my life had I had a real coach. By real I mean professional coach. So it seemed that every time I tried to get help from professionals they would be unavailable. But as the letter read I made sure I showed up on Saturday morning on time, hoping that the mess would be worked out. Well to my dismay only two other guys showed up. One of the two was a guy from a local high school, the other was a guy from Kentucky. As we waited around hoping that someone would show up we were pretty quiet, keeping to ourselves. We sat on the track bleachers for ten minutes after eight and no one showed up. So we ran. It was our first run together. We went for forty-five minutes. The pace didn’t seem fast at all, but something inside me slowed me down and I finished a disappointing minute behind C. and B. It was a blow to my psyche finishing that far behind them on an easy run. The runs continued on like that for a while. Every once in a while I would have an alright run and finish strong. After a few weeks a couple other guys that were suppose to run on the team showed up, E. and BB. During those first couple months I sadly knew what the back of each one of my teammates looked like. That really made me want to be better, so with the mindset I have I tried harder. I put myself through so much pain that giving up would have been an ignorant mistake. As each of my runs intensified I began to have more pain in my right knee. That pain ended up being quadricep tendonitis. From then on I had to wear a band around my knee until the pain went away. Well the pain never really went away, not until about two months of training past. After it went away I started training even harder than before. I would use every run like a tempo run, no matter the length.
After doing this intense training for a while I started to have pain in my lower leg, not bad at first. But after each run it became worse. Every time I embarked upon a run my self-esteem seemed to be shot down as I couldn’t run any faster. These runs I ran by myself, totally alone. Sometimes I ran at home in the country, going down roads that cars rarely visited. On my longer runs of up to two hours I would see maybe two or three cars at the most. So I of course had a lot of time to think as I ran silently down the old dirt roads. I remember seeing the frost of my breath as I ran, I remembered the cold. In a sense it reminded me of myself and how I had to become heartless so I would not feel any pain. Simply put it, I ignored the pain. I ran through it.
Each workout I hid the pain from my coach, trying to walk as normal as possible when seen by other people. I never wanted anyone else to see me struggling to walk up a set of stairs or limping towards a classroom. It wasn’t in my nature to show my weaknesses. The pain in my lower right leg that I thought was shin splints never went away, not with ice, or compression, or pain killers. It kept growing even to the point were pressing a gas pedal in a vehicle was a painful task.
I never had shin splints in my life so I thought the pain in my leg was shin splints, sure people told me about shin splints and how bad they hurt, but this felt horrible, it felt almost like it was in the bone. And that was what it was, a stress reaction in my tibia, not a full fracture, but something to get me off my feet for six months. It would have been a lot shorter time but everytime I tried to run again the pain came back. Six months is a long time to think about if it is really worth going on in running. Six months gives you plenty time to think about why you should give up. Six months is also a long time listening to people telling you to give up, saying that if your going to be hurt then you shouldn’t run. Well, I listened to my voice during those six months. I never hit the road once, I did stationary bike workouts to an endless possibility, treading water in a pool for dozens of hours, and the days off. The days off are what got to me the fastest. I would look out a window and see the road calling my name, I would notice hills and think to myself that running up it would be a dream. I would see snow lightly falling, covering the ground in a pure white. I remember running during the snow from the year before. Heavy panting as I would try to breath down the cool air, the silence as snow drifted to the ground. And the crunching of my footsteps against the freshly landed snow. That is what I missed, that is what made me want to quit, to give up all my dreams and just stop running all together. I wasn’t a runner, I was too heavy according to some, especially in the upper body. And as I continued to cross train from my injury I gained weight because I also lifted weights. As the winter months continued I weighed in at 165 pounds, not too heavy for an average guy, but the only catch was that I was 5 foot 7 inches tall. Most other runner my size weighed around 130 pounds or less. I was too heavy. Not only was I too heavy I was also told I was built like a wrestler. I had a barrel chest and powerful arms, something that most runners don’t want or need. The reason I was built like this was because of my previous dreams of going the Army and going Special Forces the reasons why I didn’t at the time are a whole other story, maybe for a later chapter. My stride was short and inefficient because of short legs. My arms could never find a comfortable position. And of course when I ran my head tilted towards the left. So I had bad form, no physical characteristics of a runner, and wanted a job that included more rucking than running. Some would say the odds were against me at first glance. But at a deeper view I had the type of personality were I didn’t want to give up on anything, I had extremely strong muscles, and I wanted to prove everyone that thought I couldn’t be great wrong. I needed to become better. I had no other choice.
Giving up is something I had never done in my life and I didn’t plan on doing it at this point either. So I pushed on. I started running again, slowly, but it was running. My runs were short and very low intensity. My “speed work” wasn’t really speed work. My long runs were only 45 minutes, which isn’t very far for me. And my mind still didn’t want to become better. Even with all this pressure, I was still running. Something that I had given up for half a year. When I started running again I ran alone. Something that is hard whenever everyone else is training with each other progressively becoming better. I was basically jogging for about two months.
Slowly but surely the intensity became faster and the mileage increased. From the beginning of summer I started running further, faster. My mileage went from forty mile weeks to seventy-five mile weeks in time. My long runs were reaching two hours long and my speed work really felt like speed work. I felt like a runner, a real runner.