A Story You've Probably Never Heard

I took the link out of the title, read it here. Story courtesy of TrackFocus.com

I came across this first person account of a "race" that I doubt most people knew Steve Prefontaine ran, in Oregon, in 1974.  It was a relay from Eugene to Corvallis simply called The Great Race, organized by fraternities from both Oregon and Oregon State as a fundraiser for Muscular Dystrophy.  The relay was run in conjunction with the annual football game between the two schools, dubbed The Civil War, and was timed so that the race actually took a break on Friday, and resumed during the 2nd quarter of the game on Saturday for the last 4 miles.  This way, the winning team(s) would come into the stadium during halftime.

Read the rest for yourself.  The story is told by Steve Bence, a runner for the University of Oregon and lifelong Nike employee.  Also playing a part in the story was Matt Centrowitz, Sr. 

The story proves to illustrate that even for a runner with the accolades of Pre, the thrill is the joy of competing.  A plastic trophy of insignificant value holds in it great memories like this one. 

It kind of reminds me of this race we do every year in February...

Why do YOU compete?

How Many Of It Is Us

"How many of it is us?" ~ one hoodrat to another, inquiring as to the size of their group for seating purposes at the Crab place in the Harbor.  Overheard Monday night by Pat and myself.

The weekend was fairly quiet, as expected with Easter on Sunday, so there weren't many performances, but here's what went down:

Steve Wancowicz ran the Mt. Penn Mudfest 15k in PA, one of his favorite events, finishing in 1:21:15 for 80th.

The Morgan State Legacy Meet was an absolute Clinic on "how not to run a track meet" - if you've heard the tale, then you know.  Combining two heats of the men's 1500m so they could get the meet moving along, putting 23 people on the line (one of whom - Arjun - was literally on the infield).  They miscounted the laps.  They botched the times.  So we don't even know how fast the guys *actually* ran, as we think the times they posted are wrong, possibly by as much as two seconds.  But nevertheless, Ed Aramayo ran well, Dustin Meeker ran his first 1500m since college, and Arjun Majumdar had a reasonably solid race, given his infield start.

And down in Florida, at Jaylen's Challenge 5k, (cousin) Emily Brown and her husband, Bryan, ran PRs, finishing 4th female/11th overall, respectively, in 25:28 and 26:00. 

Since Boston fell under the realm of this week's Purple Drink Athlete of the Week, the honor was bestowed upon David Ploskonka for his amazing Boston performance.  And, since I forgot to shout out LAST week's PDAW, that went to Kris Simms for his Westminster Mile/Pike's Peek week.

Before I forget, here are two great articles for you to read:

This one tests your knowledge on some distance running history.  See how you do, and discuss in the comments.

And this is an article about our own Matty Blaze Jablonski, written by our own Greg Jubb (for Running Maryland) and videos by our very own Louis Foudos.  Great job guys!

Good turnout at the track last night, thanks Dusty for the workout suggestion - it was challenging!  Of course, more challenging was being burrito-blocked once again.  Our dining choices are seriously killing me!  York Rd Chipotle proved just as bad, if not worse, than CVC.  At this point we may as well just go to get burgers somewhere (perhaps Pat's suggestion of Alonso's)