Running with the Buffaloes

by Chris Lear

  In the next instant Dr. Leahy is manipulating Reese’s quadriceps with his thumb and hand. “Tell me if I go too hard,” he says with a grin, “I’m pretty mean on Thursdays.” He pushes down hard on Reese’s leg and he has Reese raise and lower his leg as he applies the pressure. Reese appears unfazed, but Dr. Leahy grimaces with the effort.

  The treatment lasts only a few minutes, and then the session is over.

  Reese has spent—at most—ten minutes with Dr. Leahy. Before exiting the office, Dr. Leahy tells Reese to schedule several additional appointments because he will need two or three treatments to get rid of the pain. Reese does not bother to schedule any more appointments. Instead, he heads straight downstairs towards the exit. On the ride back to Boulder he says, “I kinda get the feeling he was rushing me out of there.” There will be no miracle cure.

  RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES

  55

  Lear 012-059:Lear 012-059 1/5/11 1:22 PM Page 56

  Friday, September 4, 1998

  Potts Field

  6:15 a.m.

  AT

  The sun is still rising in the east as the guys gradually file onto the track after finishing their warm-up jogs. One of the freshman girls looks none too pleased to be here so Wetmore offers her some encouragement.

  “Good morning,” he says. “Just think, in an hour you’ll be done for the day.”

  Her smile does not reveal whether or not this offers her any solace at all.

  Roybal enters the track and Wetmore throws a heart rate monitor at him. “Here, figure it out. Put it on.” He looks ready to go; his right fin-gernails are painted purple. Wetmore throws heart rate monitors out to most of the top guys, including Goucher, Tessman, and Friedberg. Friedberg puts his on and turns to Tessman, “My heart rate’s 22, just the way I like it.” Tessman smiles and says, “You’re fit as a whistle!” The humor is needed to help forget about the task ahead.

  As they finish their strides, Wetmore addresses the team:

  I gotta give you a speech before you go. We’re going with times today. In most cases I’ve slowed them down a little bit . . . I’m doing the best I can to make the best decision to get the best data for today. Occasionally, I want to know your heart rate. There’s no good number. I’m going by how fast you’re going, how I perceive your exertion to be, and how you perceive your exertion to be.

  The intent of the workout is to run at a pace that Wetmore estimates is 85 percent of current fitness. Still, Wetmore later admits he intentionally under-assigned them. He says afterwards, “I’d rather they go five seconds slower and see ’em all together, vibing each other.” The only exception to this is Jay Johnson. He is not ready to hang with the guys, so Wetmore instructs him to stay within a heart rate range of 168–172.

  That should be slow enough so that he does not go out over his head.

  There are two main assignments for the others. The top eight guys, and Matt Napier, are scheduled to run 79 seconds a lap. In that group Reese, Roybal, Blondeau, Ponce, and Tessman are running 8k (in 26:20) while Napier, Severy, Friedberg, and Batliner are running 10k (in 32:55). As usual, Goucher gets to train alone. His assignment: 10K at 76 seconds per lap, or 10k in 31:40.

  Fearing that they will go out too hard, Wetmore tells them, if anything, “start out too slow.” Everyone takes off at once, and Goucher immediately sets off on his own. Everyone follows Wetmore’s instructions, and the guys in the pack take turns leading, switching up after each mile.

  After they hit three miles, the pace starts inching ahead.

  56

  CHRIS LEAR

  Lear 012-059:Lear 012-059 1/5/11 1:22 PM Page 57

  Everyone continues to look smooth into the fourth mile. Goucher increases his lead after every lap, and 76’s appear to be no problem for him. But four and a half miles in, with only two laps to go, the pack loses a couple of guys. Roybal and Blondeau fall off the back. Everyone else in the 8k group stays on it, and they finish in 26:05. Roybal runs 26:40 while Blondeau, feeling sick, runs 26:45. Everyone’s heart rate in the lead pack is between 175 and 180, including Roybal and Blondeau. Tessman, for one, is pleased with his effort: “It felt easy. It’s going great. A couple of days a week I still can’t run with the team because I’m still in my adjustment period, and it helps me recover when I don’t run with them.” Belying his track background, he excitedly adds, “26 minutes. That’s still a good five mile time for me no matter where it is [never mind at elevation]. I don’t know how fast it will go later in the season.”

  Reese is also pleased. “I felt fine up here,” he says, pointing to his chest, “but neuromuscularly I felt really tired after 800 meters. But my heart rate stayed the same [180] the whole time, so that’s okay.”

  And even though he fell off the back, Roybal is psyched, not at how he fared compared to the others, but compared to his form at this time a year ago. He says, “That’s the closest thing I’ve done to a race since Nationals last November. I ran slower than them by 30 seconds but I wasn’t out of reach of them until the last two laps. That’s not that big of a deal.

  For sure, it’s an encouragement to know I’m ahead of where I was last year.” Wetmore agrees with Roybal’s assessment of his progress. “He’s coming around,” he says. With Wetmore, that is as positive an endorsement as you are going to get.

  While the 8k group recovers, Goucher and the others are still running. Goucher has dropped his pace and he now runs 73- and 74-second quarters. He looks relaxed and comfortable. He finishes in 30:59, an average of 74.4 per quarter. His average heart rate is 173, lower than everyone else on the team. In his log he writes, Felt pretty damn good!!!

  While it is tough to feel great about your workout when you finish so far behind your teammate, Sev, Napier, Friedberg, and Bat are thrilled to run 32:20—an average of 77.6 a lap, well below their target of 79 a lap. Bat alone looks a little whipped. Like Goucher, he has upped both his mileage and his intensity this season. But according to JD, Bat’s fatigue is not unusual, “It’s always like this a few weeks into the season when the guys have been training together every day rather than every other day like in the summer.”

  By 7:30 a.m. the men have finished their day’s training. They head en masse to the Village Coffee Shop for some # 5’s. JD does not accompany them. Instead, he departs to his other job with a geological consulting firm.

  Later he’ll head to the Arapahoe Invitational to recruit for next year’s team.

  RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES

  57

  Lear 012-059:Lear 012-059 1/5/11 1:22 PM Page 58

  The Arapahoe Invitational

  JD gets stuck in traffic on the way to the meet. After the AT this morning and a full day at work, he can think of other things he would rather be doing. He says, “It’s hard to get excited after seeing our guys run 5:12

  a mile for five miles this morning, then come to this meet where there’s maybe one or two kids you would want out of everyone . . . They don’t look as good as they do on the track anyway; with grass it’s so damn slow.

  This guy I’m looking at, he looks pretty good anyway.”

  That someone is the aforementioned Seth Hejny of Grand Junction, Colorado. He has roughly the same credentials as Aaron Blondeau at this stage. But whereas Blondeau went on to finish 12th at Foot Locker Nationals, JD and Wetmore are secretly hoping that Hejny not qualify for the Nationals. Their reasoning is sound. “Look,” says JD, “if he ran his times at sea level he’d have run 4:15 and 9:10 and he’d get recruited like crazy. [If] he qualifies for Foot Locker Nationals, he’ll get recruited like crazy.”

  The reality is that most of the kids he recruits will not end up coming to CU. But it takes looking at hundreds, even thousands of kids before JD finds the runners he wants. It is an unrewarding task, one that in most cases belongs to assistant coaches at programs across the country.

  JD explains: “That’s the thing about coaching. Most of our kids have no concept of what I do, that I’m on the phone at night, out h
ere. There’s no immediate satisfaction. Down the line they’ll tell you. But it’s an ego thing. You have to enjoy making people good. If you win NCAA’s, you can see it.”

  Hejny could help make that happen down the road. What makes him an even more appealing prospect is that he is an in-state kid. Money is an issue both for the kids and the program. The CU track program is under-funded, and most of their dollars are tied up for the next few years. With an in-state kid, JD believes “we can make it affordable if we give him a fifty or sixty percent scholarship. Even if they get a half scholarship from an out of state school, it’ll be more affordable here.”

  Another factor that weighs on JD and Wetmore’s minds is the success they have had with Colorado kids. One need look no farther than this year’s squad for evidence of this. Most of the contenders for the Varsity spots are from Colorado. The list includes Batliner, Berkshire, Blondeau, Goucher, Ponce, Reese, Severy, and Valenti. This list does not 58

  CHRIS LEAR

  Lear 012-059:Lear 012-059 1/5/11 1:22 PM Page 59

  include Johnson, who has struggled thus far, but he has run at the NCAA cross country meet twice, in addition to running 3:49 and 14:20. The three CU cross country All-Americans who graduated a year ago, Ricky Cron, Zeke Tiernan, and Clint Wells, are from Colorado as well.

  Wetmore’s record demonstrates that he can field a top-five team at the NCAA’s with a team composed exclusively of Coloradans. That said, Wetmore and Drake are doing their best to encourage Colorado’s best to stay in-state, and attend CU.

  Hejny runs unchallenged today. He leads at the mile and his lead grows throughout. He is a tall and strong runner, but JD is right when he says that the athletes, Hejny included, look slow in this setting. JD gives greater credence to Hejny’s time. He runs thirty seconds faster than a year ago. He is looking more and more like a national recruit.

  Hejny’s coach approaches JD after the race and Hejny joins them. JD

  was hoping to get him in for a visit before the Foot Locker Nationals, but Hejny does not want to take any visits before the state meet at the end of October. The news disappoints JD, but what follows is tougher to swallow. Vin Lananna of Stanford is after Hejny as well. His reputation as a phenomenal recruiter, coupled with the vast resources of Stanford University, make Lananna a colossal opponent to match up against in the recruiting game.

  Traffic is no better on the way home. Hejny’s news exacerbates JD’s fatigue.

  Stanford is on JD’s mind the whole way home. He cannot believe they keep getting so many top athletes. But now his thoughts are not on the future, but this year’s race, where Stanford looks formidable. “I know we’ll run smarter than any team at NC’s; we always do. But the only way we can beat Stanford is if they fuck up.”

  What Stanford does not have is the record of success that Wetmore has with walk-ons. Maybe tomorrow they will get another guy out of the woodwork. Who knows?

  RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES

  59

  Lear 060-101:Lear 060-101 1/5/11 1:23 PM Page 60

  Saturday, September 5, 1998

  The Buffalo Ranch, Open/Alumni/Varsity Time Trials

  9:18 a.m.

  Vengeance Is a Very Useful Tool

  Jason Robbie has to earn his spot on the squad today. But his chance took a turn for the worse late last night at Severy’s cabin. Most of the men and women on the team showed up there for a BBQ. For some, it was their first trip to his cabin.

  The cabin is not the only attraction. Sev’s motorcycle is there, and Robbie, debating purchasing a motorcycle, decided to take it out for a quick spin. When a half hour went by and he had not returned, a couple of cars set out to find him. His teammates’ fear that he had crashed was confirmed when they spotted Sev’s abandoned motorcycle parked

  alongside the road. Robbie was at the cabin when the search party returned. He hitched a ride there from a passing motorist after wiping hard.

  Similar to Severy’s crash earlier this season on August 25th, he was hardly moving when he fell. He was simply trying to turn the bike to head back up the road to Sev’s cabin when the bike slid out from under him on a patch of gravel. He was banged up pretty good. Blood streamed from his right hand, elbow, and knee.

  He fought hard to maintain

  his composure while John-

  son and Sev scrubbed his

  wounds with anti-bacterial

  Softsoap. They could not re-

  move all the pebbles from

  his skin, so he went to the

  hospital to get disinfected.

  His ordeal didn’t end until

  he arrived home at 2:00 a.m.

  This morning his body

  is sore and stiff from the

  fall. Schafer spots him as he

  finishes his warm-up and

  says, “If you don’t run well

  today, at least you got an

  excuse.” Robbie will have

  A bloodied Jason Robbie

  leads Sean Smith.

  60

  CHRIS LEAR

  Lear 060-101:Lear 060-101 1/5/11 1:23 PM Page 61

  none of it. “Dude,” he says firmly, “that ain’t an option. If I don’t run well it’s ’cause my legs are falling off and I’m going back to the hospital.” He glares up at Schafer, as he finishes tying his spikes. “You got that?”

  Being Boulder, even this rinky-dink race is not without star quality.

  The mercenary du jour is none other than U.S. international marathoner Keith Dowling. A former resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, he has been living in Boulder for several years now. He has just started training again and he is using this race to check his fitness.

  Dowling’s presence does nothing to help Slattery’s nerves in his collegiate debut. Slattery is competing unattached and running in his New Jersey singlet from high school nationals, but he is nervous. “This sucks,”

  he says. “I don’t want to run.” Wetmore is unfazed that Slattery is so nervous. “He’s a good one,” he says, “he’s got courage. Not many of them have that.”

  That has been the knock on Valenti—that when push comes to

  shove, he turns into the Tin Man in search of a heart. If you knew nothing of the guys and were to watch one practice, he is the man you would pick for your squad—not Goucher, not Batliner, not Roybal. He will get his first chance today to show his practices are not a fluke. He, too, is not wearing a CU uniform. He is running in a T-shirt and shorts. And due to the hardness of the course, he runs in flats. He will earn his jersey today.

  It is brutally hot. The heat contributes to a conservative early pace.

  A mile and a half in, Dowling, Berkshire, and Valenti have gapped the field.

  Berkshire is dropped in short order, and Robbie moves on him. His elbow and hand are bandaged

  from the fall. Fearing a loss of

  mobility, he has not bandaged his

  knee. The motion has reopened

  the wound. Blood streams down

  his shin.

  Chasing them are Darren De

  Reuck—husband of South African

  marathoner Colleen De Reuck—

  and an unknown in a sleeveless

  T-shirt and red USA shorts. A

  pack of guys including Slattery,

  his roommate Matt Ruhl, and El-

  muccio chase after De Reuck.

  But all eyes are on the race up

  front. Valenti and Dowling run

  Valenti, Berkshire, and Dowling out front.

  RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES

  61

  Lear 060-101:Lear 060-101 1/5/11 1:23 PM Page 62

  side by side until they hit the downhill a half mile from the finish. Surprisingly, it is not Dowling who makes the move, but Valenti. “I figured I had nothing to worry about after that,” he said afterwards, “so I just went.”

  And no one catches him. He puts eleven seconds on Dowling in the last half mile. Wetmore grins as he eyes Valenti’s finish and says, “
Vengeance is a very useful tool.” For his part, Valenti appears unmoved by his victory.

  Reticent and reserved, he offers nothing else. And nothing needs to be said. He ran 1:15 faster than a year ago. He did his talking with his feet.

  Berkshire finishes third, 90 seconds faster than a year ago. “Those guys ran tough,” he says. “I thought I might be able to go that last mile and get them, but I was rigging.” He is pleased, and so is Wetmore. In most programs, it is the star who sets the example. At CU, the walk-ons have established a legacy of their own. Wetmore says of Berkshire, “He’s 90

  seconds ahead of a year ago. Great. Perfect. You can’t underestimate 1000

  miles in ten weeks. It’s unfashionable now and it’s unpopular, but he said I’m gonna risk everything, and he made it.”

  Despite his wounds, Robbie also makes the team. He finishes sixth, behind De Reuck in fourth and a freshman from Goucher’s alma mater, Doherty High, in fifth (Cameron Harrison). While troublesome, Robbie’s knee did not bother him nearly as much as his bruised ribs. He cramped up in the race, and he valiantly struggled to finish.

  Schafer finishes seventh. Adam Loomis, a transfer from Portland, is eighth, and the Jersey duo of Slattery and Elmuccio finish ninth and tenth.

  Wetmore is not concerned with the Jersey boys’ mediocre showing, since they have only recently been up at elevation. “For sea level guys, on the hills, in the heat, fine.” The guy with the USA shorts who was up with the leaders early finishes eleventh. His name is Sean Smith, and he re-Valenti drops

  Dowling.

  62

  CHRIS LEAR

  Lear 060-101:Lear 060-101 1/5/11 1:23 PM Page 63

  ceived the shorts for participating in the World junior triathlon championships last November. Last spring, he “decided to try the running scene a bit,” and he trained 40 to 45 miles a week this summer to prepare for the race. Smith has earned a spot on the squad.