Running: Part VIII

(And we continue. Preceded by parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.)

The winter of 1990-91 was among the most important to my running career. I turned 17 in February and had grown, both physically and mentally, to the point where I could better handle Tom's off-season training regimen. It was becoming part of my life. Just as important, I was starting to believe I could be as good as Tom, Coach Wilson and others told me I could be.

From the first of December until the end of February, I averaged 71 miles of training per week. That included a week over Christmas break when I went nuts and ran 101 miles. This was also the period when I really bought into mental picturing. For our cross country teams, it was a weekly pre-meet ritual, thanks to Coach Wilson. Now, I was doing it every day. I can still remember falling asleep, headphones on, while music played and I envisioned the havoc I was going to wreak on my competitors in the spring.

I raced a few indoor meets in Lawrence. At the January 13 AAU Regional, I won the mile and two-mile races, missing my PR in the latter by just two seconds. At the national AAU event, in mid-February, I placed third in the two-mile on Saturday before winning Sunday's mile. (We were running late for that second race and Dad was stopped for speeding a few blocks from the track. I hopped out of the car and chugged the rest of the way, arriving five minutes before the race started.) I couldn't wait for the outdoor season to start.

Practice opened on February 25 and, due to some wet weather, we only raced once between then and April 6. It was a small event, with just four teams. But one was Shawnee Mission Northwest, then and now one of the premiere distance programs in Kansas. Someone from that team won my race, the 3200. But the look of bewilderment on his teammates' faces as they watched him try to shake the still relatively unknown Aquinas kid was satisfying. I finished a few steps back in 10:10, one second off my PR. The next few weeks were non-descript, with a mile win at Paola and an 800 win at Gardner.

On April 15, our workout consisted of eight 400-meter repeats. I ran the first five in 65, 65, 66 and 66 seconds. After that fourth repeat, our head coach informed me I had not qualified to run the mile at the Kansas Relays. The next 400 was completed in 57 seconds. That's about the best way I can describe how incredibly upset I was to not be in the KU Relays field.

I didn't compete again until the Olathe North Relays on April 23, where I released a bit of KU Relays frustration with PR victories in the 1600 (4:26) and 3200 (9:59). Four days later, I won the 800 and 1600 at our home invitational. I was getting into a groove. But the real coming-out party wouldn't occur until May 3, the Shawnee Mission North Relays.

In my mind, SM North ranked third in importance only to the state meet and the KU Relays. The competition was the best I would see all season. Yet another turning point had arrived, perhaps the biggest one yet.