Chapter 3: Glory Road
My
first season of Cross Country was a lot like my first couple weeks driving by
myself. I could tell this was something really cool that I’d want to do for
years, but I was also incredibly nervous and uncomfortable. Plus, I moved
slower than everybody else on the road.
But
admittedly, I had two massive PRs that summer. The first came in a local 5k, my
second one I had ever run. I went out a bit conservative and then just tried to
stay consistent through the final two miles. About half way through the race I
noticed a runner ahead of me who I had not seen since my second grade birthday
party. A boy named Michael Fuery, who I hadn’t talked to in almost seven years
since he switched schools, was running just a few meters ahead of me. I
recognized him almost immediately. It’s funny how life has a way of bringing
people back into your life in the most unexpected ways[1][2].
So
naturally when I spotted him up ahead my first thoughts were the same as
anybody else’s would have been: “I have
to catch him”. It took an entire mile of digging, but up the last hill before
the straightaway turn to the finish, I was within striking distance. Then I put
on a kick and sprinted by, I was ahead of him with about five meters to go and then
I let up going into the finish line. I knew I had beat him. And then he passed
me back, entering the shoot just ahead of me and that was that. I lost. I ran the
fastest 5k of my life (so far) that day by over two and half minutes, but that
race will always be special because I learned one of the most valuable lessons
in running. Always run through the line.
The
second came on a typical summer night over at Upper Dublin track. I was going
to time trial a mile in the hopes of breaking 6 minutes for the first time. But
in order to understand the significance of this moment, let me back up a bit.
As I’ve
already told you, my first goal as a track and field athlete was to break 6
minutes in the mile. However, after an underwhelming year of sprinting[3] I was still stuck at 6:14.
One summer night, my father and I went to see the movie Glory Road at the Regal Cinemas near our house. Everything seemed
perfectly normal. And then all of a sudden my breathing was off. I started
freaking out. I left the theatre and started to hyperventilate. I was very
confused and very frightened and, honestly, I thought I was dying. As it turns
out it was merely a panic attack, the first one I had ever had[4], and because when the
panic attack hit I made the brilliant decision to panic … things didn’t go so well. At the time, my dad didn’t
know what was going on either so we drove straight to the emergency room.
What’s amazing to me (and in retrospect has become a funny joke in the Felix
household) is that as I sat there, convinced I was dying, I said to my dad,
“But … I never got to break 6 …”
Yes, my
biggest regret of dying at the age of 14 was that I had never broken 6 minutes
in the mile. What a strange breed runners are.
A few
weeks later, fully recovered, I hopped on the track (literally, we usually had
to hop the fence to get on), got some help from my friend Matt Tanzer the final
200m, and ran 5:48 for my first ever sub 6. Afterwards we shot around on the
basketball court at my favorite park, Mondauk, and my parents took us for
Rita’s. It was just like any other summer night.
It’s
never really as magical as you think it will be. Looking back on it, I like to
think of it like Quinton Cassidy’s first sub-4 minute mile in Once a Runner[5].
For much of the story, all Cassidy wants to do is go out and break 4 minutes in
the mile, joining the elite club of sub 4 guys. Once Cassidy starts training
with Coach Bruce Denton, an Olympic Gold Medalist and certified baller, his attitude
changes. The first time he breaks four minutes in the mile is during a simple
time trail run with Bruce. Nobody around or anything. To him, it was just another workout.
Seriously,
how sick is that?
….
Four
freshmen joined the Upper Dublin cross country team in Fall of 2009: Matt
Tanzer, Brian Lee, Jack Mao and myself. Picture a chess club and you have a
pretty good image of what the four of us looked like. We mostly kept to
ourselves, didn’t take our shirts off for runs, you know classic awkward
freshmen stuff. And, if you can believe this is true, back then I knew nothing
about PA High School Cross Country and Track and Field. This was before the
etrain account had ever been created, people. So I spent the summer learning. A
lot.
My
first cross country meet certainly fit the “learning experience” theme. I ran
at Belmont Plateau, a course most famous for its devastating Parachute Hill.
I’d never faced anything like it before and it zapped me clean of energy half
way through my first ever JV 4k. I remember I stopped to walk at one point of
the race, was last for the team and ran about 18 or 19 minutes. So pretty much
a trifecta of terrible. I was pretty embarrassed afterwards: it’s hard to put
yourself out there and just get crushed. But patience is one of the most
important character traits of a runner, and, thankfully, I stayed the course[6].
That
day was also the first time I witnessed a national caliber team: the Warriors
of West Chester Henderson. The Triple Threat meet at Belmont plateau was unlike
any meet I have run at before or since (it was replaced by the 4xXC meet). Here
is how the meet was set up. Belmont had a 3k, 4k and 5k course set up and your
top 7 was split 2-3-2 among the three races. You listed each runner in your top
7 in order and then it was randomly selected where each runner would go. In
other words, all the #1 runners would run the 4k, the #2 guys the 5k, etc.,
etc. The meet was scored on combined time. I always thought this was a cool
idea for an early season meet (and having run 4xXC, I like this set up better).
West
Chester Henderson’s top three that year was fantastic, and they proved it on
the trails. Chris Aldrich won the 4k, Chris Ferry won the 5k and Andrew Jervis
won the 3k. Those top three were fantastic and they would take Henderson a long
way that season. This meet was also the first time I learned that my teammate
Mike Palmisano could be something special. He won the JV 4k with an impressive
sprint finish.
[1] After basically forgetting the kid
existed for nearly a decade, we ended up becoming pretty good friends again. He
played on my intermural basketball team that winter (and hit a game winning
shot), we tried to recruit him back to our Upper Dublin squad (he would have
been a strong member of our top 5), and he even helped pace me in a 3k time
trial over the summer before my sophomore year of college.
[2] This one gets a double footnote
because that’s what I do. Mike’s sister was in my junior year English class at
Upper Dublin. One day we played charades in class and the topic was “movies”.
So I submitted “Prefontaine” as a movie. By a stroke of luck, Mike’s sister
(the only person in the class other than me and a couple friends on my charade’s
team who actually knew what the move was) was the one who had to act out the
movie. She couldn’t get anybody to guess it and ended up point and at me and
shouting in the middle of the game “It’s his! I know it’s his!”
[3] Yes, I was a sprinter in 8th
grade. We had weight classes on our middle school team and I was the fastest
one in our weight class (I think 105 pounds?) so I did it. I got fed up because
none of our coaches knew who I was (I was listed as “Fox” for one meet) and
wanted to try to grab some glory. Ironically, even after I switched to
sprinting and starting placing high, they still didn’t really know who I was.
[4] I’ve handled my future panic
attacks much better … Mainly because they were panic attacks about having a
more serious panic attack.
[6] Horrible pun intended
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