This past weekend at my friend's wedding, I spent significant time chatting about running with my WJU teammate, Matt Abel. Matt was a very accomplished runner in college, qualifying for DII Nationals in XC and amassing multiple all-conference and all-region honors. During our conversation, I mentioned that my club member, Dave Berdan, would attempt to qualify for the OTs on Saturday morn at the Baltimore marathon. Matt replied, "Dave Berdan? He ran for Elizabethtown. I outkicked him once. He ran great times as junior and senior." At this moment, I realized that I undoubtedly raced against Dave several times throughout my college career. In the recent past, I must have learned that Dave ran for E-town, but, for some reason, it didn't stick and I never pondered the fact that he and I would have competed in the same races. Perhaps I didn't commit it to memory because Dave would have been just one of many E-town runners who beat in XC, as they had a deep squad and I was merely a middle-of-the-pack runner for much of my XC career.
Once I realized that I had a raced Dave in college XC, I immediately visualized a photograph of me that a teammate had taken at the 2000 Davis and Elkins College Fall Festival Invite. At that moment, I knew I had to find the photograph and determine whether it was Dave. After digging through a box of photos, I located the image and cross referenced it with E-town XC images from 2000 to confirm that it was Dave. This photo hung on the wall of my dorm room for at least a year during college. I still remember my teammate leaving it for me on my dorm room door with a note.
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| Dusty side by side with Berdan |
