by Chris Lear
A non-CU student finishes twelfth before freshmen Zach Crandall from Fort Collins and Matt Ruhl from Jersey finish thirteenth and fourteenth. Both of them will also learn later today that they have earned spots on the squad. The last man to claim his spot today is someone who was already on the squad, transfer O’Mara. Despite his poor showing, he remains upbeat: “It was pretty tough, but I didn’t back off on any miles this week so that made it tougher. It’s my first season at altitude and racing, it just takes some time. If I run 29 or 24 minutes this season, it doesn’t matter to me.”
VARSITY/OPEN/ALUMNI
TIME TRIAL RESULTS
PLACE
NAME
TIME
PACE
1.
Christopher Valenti
26:55
5:21
2.
Keith Dowling
27:06
5:24
3.
Wes Berkshire
27:15
5:25
4.
Darren De Reuck
27:24
5:27
5.
Cameron Harrison
27:36
5:29
6.
Jason Robbie
27:42
5:31
7.
Chris Schafer
27:52
5:32
8.
Adam Loomis
27:55
5:33
9.
Steve Slattery
27:59
5:34
10.
Matt Elmuccio
28:08
5:36
11.
Sean Smith
28:14
5:37
12.
Geoff Streit
28:26
5:39
13.
Zach Crandall
28:28
5:40
14.
Matt Ruhl
28:31
5:40
15.
John O’Mara
28:52
5:45
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Sunday, September 6, 1998
Magnolia Road
8:30 a.m.
Casualties
The density of the training is affecting the men. Although any weakness you have is exacerbated and exposed by Old Man Mags, today’s casualties are unusually high—starting right at the top.
Even though he wore his trainers for the AT on Friday, Goucher’s effort beat up his calves. For the first—and only—time all season, he will not be in front at the end of a Sunday run. Eric Mack, his old high school teammate and currently a post-graduate pupil of Wetmore’s, impressively storms away from all assembled. Goucher and Severy, the aerobic monster, finish a minute behind “the Macker.” As if Mags were not difficult enough, Severy’s discomfort is magnified by a strange sensation in his chest. It forces him to stop along the side of the road four miles from the finish, where he vainly tries to empty his gut. The pain persists even after the run ends. Milling around and appearing more uncomfortable than his usual self, he explains, “It feels like there’s a bubble in my chest pushing everything up.” His only relief is that he is done, and even in less than ideal conditions, he and Goucher have run 1:46 for the full Mags —17.4
miles at over 8000 feet —a great time for the arduous course.
A minute later, Friedberg and Ponce cross the five-mile marker that signifies the run’s end. Both athletes have run huge PR’s for Mags. Friedberg has slashed two minutes off of his previous best, while Ponce runs an astonishing ten minutes faster than he ever has. The 100-mile weeks have strengthened him.
A minute and a half behind that duo, Big Papa Napier chugs across the line. After running with Ponce and Friedberg for the first 15 miles, they surged, pulling ahead in the last two miles. However, while this “racing” is discouraged on other campuses, it is accepted and understood as a matter of course on Sundays at CU. Jason Robbie explains: “There’s only one thing you’re out there to do on Sunday, and that’s to better yourself by running as fast as you can. That’s it. Dude, you don’t wait for anyone.”
Wetmore’s enthusiasm for their runs is tempered by the knowledge of those who did not finish. Batliner, Roybal, and Tessman were all forced to quit mid-run. Roybal’s hamstring, the same one that caused him un-ending grief a year ago, is acting up again. Six miles in, he calls it a day. Sore since Wednesday, Batliner ends his run after feeling no progress in his aching calf. Four miles from the finish, Tessman joins the pair at the 64
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makeshift water station that JD has set up for the runners. An aching knee forces him to throw in the towel.
While discouraged, none of the three are down because of their effort. Roybal knows he must listen to his body, and push only when he is ready. For him, this is part of the process. Batliner, meanwhile, has been injured so often that he would rather be cautious and miss a day than have another lengthy absence ruin a season. And for Tessman, this is a whole new world of fatigue; a former half-miler, he understands that there are going to be days like this. He has almost two full days to recuperate before practice resumes Tuesday with the first long specificity workout of the season: repeat miles (referred to as “milers”) at the Buffalo Ranch.
Sophomore Blondeau is more down than the others. He was sick
with flu-like symptoms for Friday’s AT and today he pukes after running the fourteen miles in 92 minutes. Last year at this time, he ran this course a full five minutes faster. To compound matters, his shins are sore from the AT and the downhills on Mags. His only positive thought is that, hopefully, his immune system will be strengthened after these trials, so “at least [he] won’t get something the day before Nationals.”
Tessman and Roybal’s injuries will disappear as quickly as they appeared. But for Batliner and Blondeau, today’s troubles are but a prelude.
GOUCHER AND MACK
Goucher and Mack finish today as they did when Goucher first
started running cross country as a sophomore at Doherty High School in Colorado Springs, with Mack setting the pace. Two years older than Goucher, Mack entered his senior year in high school as the favorite to win the state championship. Having only started running as a junior, Mack had rapidly progressed to that point. Goucher, meanwhile, almost never ran high school cross country despite winning the City Championship 1600 meters in 4:42 as a ninth grader.
Goucher had his eye on football. Meanwhile, Judy Fellhauer (known as Flower), the Doherty High School cross country coach and an Olympic Trials competitor in the marathon in 1988, had hopes of coaching Goucher since she watched him win the 8th grade City Championship in the 1600
meters in 5:03. She spoke to Goucher for the first time after he won the mile title again as a freshman, telling him she would love to coach him.
More important, she spoke to Goucher’s mother. Adam’s mother explained to Flower that no one in her family had gone to college, and that her only goal for Adam was that he do well enough in a sport to gain a scholarship to college. Goucher only weighed 125 pounds then, and Flower explained that in order for him to get a football scholarship, he RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES
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would probably have to gain 50 to 60 pounds and perform really, really well. If Goucher ran, well, she would not promise anything, but she speculated that he may get a scholarship out of it in the end.
Flower watched in disappointment at the beginning of Goucher’s sophomore year when she saw him in line to sign up for football. But while in line, Goucher realized he was going to be late for work, so he left for his job in a feed store, figuring he would sign up for football the following day.
That evening, Goucher’s mother and sister
s persuaded him that Doherty’s football team was not that good, and that he was too small to really excel at football, anyway. They encouraged him to try something new and run cross country. Flower stayed out of it, not wanting to influence Goucher’s decision. Goucher called Flower later that evening. “Flower,”
he said, “this is Adam Goucher. I don’t know if you remember me, but is it too late to sign up for cross country?” “Of course, I remembered him,”
Flower says. “He had no idea everyone [on the cross country team] was talking about him.”
Goucher showed up for practice the next day in a pair of Reebok Pump cross-trainers, ready to run. Flower sent him on a five-mile run, and when he came back, she says, “He was muddy, moaning and groaning.”
Goucher recalls thinking, “Holy shit! This is crazy!” Nevertheless, he asked two fellow sophomores on the team who Doherty’s best runner was. They pointed to Mack. “All right,” he told them, “I’ll beat him by the end of the year.” His friends laughed.
A week and a half later, Goucher ran his first ever cross country race.
He asked Flower beforehand who the best guys in the race were, and she pointed out three or four of the top guys before warning him to pace himself out there. Mack won the race, and Goucher finished fifth, in 16:50.
“Oh my God,” Flower thought to herself, “what have I got here?” As the season progressed, Goucher improved dramatically, inching closer and closer to Mack in every race. At the regional qualifier for the state meet, Goucher finished only five seconds behind Mack. Seeing Goucher’s progress, Flower gave both Mack and Goucher the same counsel before the state meet. “You’re the guy,” she told each of them. “You can work together or you can run your own race. Go for it, and don’t hold back.”
Until the eve of the state meet, Flower says, “Mack appreciated Goucher’s talent, but he never gave him too much thought. He was worried about the other seniors in the state.” Now Goucher was a threat.
At the state meet, Goucher caught Mack a mile and half into the race. They ran neck and neck until Goucher broke him with a half mile left and went on to win the state championship in 15:27. It was the first cross country race he had ever won.
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Flower had planned on going to the Kinney (now Foot Locker) regional cross country championships with only the seniors. The top eight finishers from the regional meet advance to the national championship race. But now that Goucher had won, she extended the invitation to him as well. Goucher and his family raised funds for him to make the trip, and he finished fourth in the regionals in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to qualify for the national meet. Only one other sophomore in America, Brian Young from Oklahoma, qualified for Kinney Nationals. Mack would finish a disappointing tenth in Kenosha, missing Nationals by an agonizing two spots.
Flower recalls that Goucher “didn’t realize what an accomplishment it was to make it.” Rather than rest on his laurels when he returned to Colorado Springs, Goucher trained with the intention of winning the national championship. Two weeks prior to the Nationals though, Flower’s mother had a stroke. She would be unable to accompany Goucher to the national championship.
By himself in San Diego for the Kinney championship, Goucher says,
“I was blown away. I was treated like a king.” Racing in the seventh cross country race of his life, he finished an admirable thirteenth. But Goucher was less than elated when he called Flower to tell her his result. “When he called,” Flower says, “he was like, ‘I’m the biggest loser in the world. I got thirteenth.’ He was completely mad at himself. But we talked him into it. We explained that it was really a pretty good deal.”
That race, says Goucher, “was the turning point. It told me I have the potential to be good.” Forced to miss the basketball season because he had “skipped” the tryouts to run Kinney Nationals, Goucher focused his energy on running. That spring, Goucher finished third in the 800 at the state meet in 1:57, in his second 800 ever, and he also finished third in the 1600 meters. Mack, meanwhile, capped his high school career with a state title in the 3200-meter run.
Each year, Flower had her athletes write down their goals, both for the season and long term. In the summer following Goucher’s sophomore campaign, Flower says, “We had long talks about his goals. He was now the man to beat. It was such a difference from his sophomore year.”
During these meetings, Flower helped Goucher set his short-term and long-term goals. Goucher wrote down his goals prior to his junior year.
They were as follows: “Achieve leadership skills, be a good role model, State Champion for a second year, State Champions as a team, work hard and do the best I can, go to Regionals and make it to Nationals, be top three, or better yet, first in the nation, and 1996, Atlanta.”
Goucher dominated his junior year. He won every race throughout the cross country season, set course records, and repeated as state champion. At the state championships, he set a state record for 5k, run-RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES
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ning 15:03. His team had won the championship his sophomore year, and this time they finished sixth, but otherwise, he had thus far met his each of his short-term objectives.
But at the Kinney regionals, disaster struck. He finished ninth, seemingly missing the Nationals by one spot. Seeing that, Flower says, “I just died. When I saw him, I just said, ‘I’m sorry.’” But Goucher had a surprise for her. “I made it,” he said. One of the runners ahead of him was Canadian, so he qualified again for Kinney Nationals.
He was lucky to qualify. But Goucher was not about to waste the second chance he had been given. Flower says, “We went there to win.”
But again, things did not go as planned at Nationals, and Goucher finished a disappointing fifteenth. Flower says, “He felt so good, and quickly ended up in front of the pack. Eventually, the whole pack passed him. He forgot all of our strategies because he was feeling good. I think he learned a lot from that race. He learned more from that than any race he has ever won. He learned about using your head as much as your body.”
Goucher skipped indoor track, because Flower feared burning him out. “I think we could have cleaned up,” she says, “but I wanted him to stay really hungry for it. I thought, ‘If he’s going to be in it for the Olympics, I can’t burn him out now.’” Goucher’s precocity mandated that Flower consider such grand ambitions. She says, “We talked about the Olympics right away. Talentwise, I thought he had it, and I think one of his biggest assets is his pain tolerance and focus. Then there is his competitiveness.
He will pay the price. He will train.” Her intuition about his physical skills was proven when he was subjected to a battery of tests at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs following his senior year. Flower says, “He excelled in every level. His muscle strength was exceptional. His VO Max was exceptional, and his muscle biopsy was exceptional.”
2
In the spring of his junior year, Goucher continued to improve, winning the 1600- and 3200-meter runs at the state championships in 4:18
and 9:35. By this time, none of Goucher’s teammates could keep up with him, forcing him to train alone. This did not deter him. “Most of the time,”
says Flower, “he was alone. But he never complained about it. Never.”
Entering his senior year, it was time for Goucher to make new goals.
They were as follows:
1. Win State championship for third time, and break his state record of 15:03.
2. Win Footlocker Midwest Regional Championship, Kenosha,
Wisconsin.
3. Win Footlocker National Championship, San Diego, California.
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4. Be first Colorado runner to break 15:00 for 5k—Goal: 14:53.
5. Long T
erm–Collegiate National Champion, Make Olympic Team in 1996, 2000 and beyond.
Goucher wrote his goals on poster board and blue construction
paper. He decorated the poster with black spray paint, “to make it mysterious,” and printed the goals in large black letters. He hung the poster high on the wall of his bedroom, he says, “so when I woke up, I could see it. When I went to bed, I could see it. I was constantly thinking about what I wanted to do.”
Flower also wanted to “hold him publicly accountable” for his goals, so during his senior year, the team brought a banner to meets that read 14:53. Flower devised a training plan “with everything focused on Foot Locker [formerly Kinney Nationals],” and more than ever, Goucher dedicated himself to accomplishing his goals. In midseason, he accomplished his fourth goal, running a spectacular 14:41 for 5k on the state meet course. And at the state meet, he again covered the course in under fifteen minutes despite the fact that it was covered with three inches of snow.
Unfortunately, Goucher was unable to savor his state meet victory for long. Only three hours after the race, Goucher was on a plane to Florida to visit his ailing grandmother. She passed away while he was there. She was originally from Worcester, Massachusetts, so Goucher and his family then went to Massachusetts for the funeral. There was a bliz-zard in Massachusetts, yet every day, Goucher ran in preparation for the regional meet. “I have to turn this negative energy into positive energy,”
he told himself. “I have to focus on what I want to do, for the family.”
Goucher won the Midwest Regional in 15:13, tying the course
record held by former U.S. 10,000-meter champion Todd Williams. It was on to the Foot Locker (Kinney) National Championships for the third, and final time.
This time, his family accompanied Goucher to San Diego. Throughout the season, Flower had studied the competition by reading results in X-C Express. “I felt it motivated him to see how he compared to the rest of the guys throughout the year,” she says. “We knew that when we got to Foot Locker, we knew everything about everyone.”