All My Friends Are Runners: The Birth of Etrain

Chapter 19: The Birth of Etrain

Fresh off a breakthrough cross country season, Upper Dublin’s Junior Mike Palmisano hit the track with a whole new level of confidence. He had been a solid a year earlier, running 1:57 for 800 meters in the spring, but he wasn’t a state caliber guy. His first meet back, Upper Dublin won the DMR in 11 flat. His second meet back he clocked a strong split on the team’s 8:19 4x8. But in Meet #3 he wowed everyone with a 4:25 runaway victory in the open mile. That time was good enough to break the school record, the first record setting performance I got to witness firsthand[1].

That was Mike’s last race before the prestigious Burdette Invitational. Burdette was always the first real invitational of the season and a lot of teams started to, if not quite play their hand, at least look at their cards when we started getting to the end of December. Fresh off his school record in the mile, we were all excited to watch him race again in his best event, the 800. And we were particularly excited to see who his main competition was.

Remember North Penn’s Zack Montijo from a couple chapters back? Well Montijo had anchored the North Penn 4x8 to a state title the previous spring and then finished 6^th in the state to lead the Knights to the XC state title in the fall. He was, quite frankly, a beast. However, we had just lost to the powerhouse that was North Penn at districts and states and we were hungry for any sort of shot at revenge. And Montijo? He was the guy who got our squad most fired up.

When the gun sounded, Montijo went to the front and Mike found his way into second. From there, Palm just sat in and held position, waiting for the right moment to pounce. On the last lap, Mike turned on the jets and sprinted by with his lightening kick to grab the upset victory. The official time was 1:58.20 which, although not incredibly fast, was a meet record at the time.

After that, it would be hard for Mike to win any sort of race and it be considered an upset.

***

My sophomore indoor track season was a ton of fun. With Mitch and Pete joining the team, I had two new training partners and friends. I was also getting increasingly friendly with the older guys on the team who I’d previously been scared and intimidated by. And through that friendship, I learned about the penntrack forums. A lot of the guys had penntrack accounts that they used to post in the site’s discussion forum[2]. As a prospective track super fan, I was immediately drawn to the sharing of knowledge. And so, I decided to get an account for myself.

I logged on one day, punched in our email and tried to make an account. But I was blocked as apparently an account under our home email address had already been created. It turned out that my dad, once he started to realize that this sport was something I was really invested in, had made an account so that he could try and learn more about track and field. His account name consisted of a couple pieces: his personal nickname (“Earl” which was often shortened to “E”), the fact that he weight trained and the month of his birth[3] (“11”). I lobbied to share the account and thus officially tied myself to the name “etrain11”.

Everything just sort of grew from there. I started to post more and more frequently. I studied more and more results. I learned more and more faces. Every meet I attended I’d pick up something new and tuck it away in my memory. At one meet, I can remember a bunch of different guys on the team asking me to recite their PRs, including our stand-out 400-meter runner Brian Rosenthal. I knew his 400 PR down to the hundredths (it was 49.99 so it was easy to remember) which I think made him a combination of flattered and frightened.

A few meets later we were at the TFCAofGP Last Chance meet just before states. Our best runner, Mike Palmisano, was running the 800 meters and I was hanging out with him before the race near the check in area. At the association meets, it was traditional to look around at the other guys checking in to size up your competition. I remember seeing a taller kid in a black sweatshirt in the corner and I told Mike to watch out for him. Not long after, that same kid ended up winning the race[4]. I don’t think I would have actually picked him to win the race, but it still made me look good.

And with moments like those, etrain became more than just a name on the penntrack forums, it became something of an identity for me.

On the track, I was finding my identity a bit more as well. Coach Ames began throwing me in workouts with some of our top guys on the shorter/faster days and my goal was basically to hang on as long as I could. Looking back, it seems like a pretty crazy training plan, but it paid off big time. I was consistently improving each week.

After some solid races in the 8 and 4, the coaches decided to try and get me a TFCAofGP medal. At the time, these were a huge deal. The top five individuals/teams in each event would get a medal for their efforts. Pretty sizable medals too that a lot of kids would wear around their neck. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want one. But running on a loaded 4x8 was really scary. I went from running with my classmates who I was comparable to if not a little faster, to running with a group of juniors and seniors who were consistent medal winners (and, thus, way faster).

At Haverford College, the same site as my first ever indoor race, I ran the 4x800 relay’s second leg for our team. I ran a personal best of 2:12.2, but was our slowest leg on the 8:35.8 relay. When our anchor crossed the line, we were in 5^th place overall and it seemed like my first medal was clinched. However, when they announced the results, it was revealed that CB East had edged us out with a faster time from the previous heat and knocked us down one spot to 6^th. Ironically, two weeks later at a small meet at Glenn Mills, my relay squad finished 6^th again as my 4x4 ran 3:50.2.

Although I was beginning to climb the ranks, I still hadn’t grabbed a medal which meant I was eligible for the Novice Meet at Lehigh. This meet was designed for runners on teams who weren’t consistently competing for medals to have a chance to race at the front of the field rather than buried in the back. I had good memories of this meet from the previous year where our 4x8 had competed and held our own for the first time in a race[5]. After our cool down, I made it a goal of mine to come back to this meet and win the next season. The desire for victory only intensified after the early season loss at the hands of Abington in the frosh/soph relay.

But the coaching staff decided it made more sense to put me on the 4x4 relay rather than the 4x8. I had run solid times in the shorter event and we really needed one extra piece to help get our relay over the top. It wasn’t the event I expected to contest, but it didn’t change my goal of gold. Again, I ran second on the relay and got the baton in about 2^nd place. As I was working my way up toward the lead, a runner fell, tripping on the rail, and opened up a clear path of track. From there, it was smooth sailing and our team ran away with the victory as Eric Lau opened up the gap on the third leg and our fellow sophomore Joey Logano brought home the gold. It was a great way to finish off the indoor season.

Or so I thought.

On Friday night, I rode the bus home from the Novice Meet, thinking that my season was finished. My coach came by to talk to me and asked me to run at the PTFCA Carnvial Meet that was being contested the next day. I knew this meet was reserved for our best guys (because you could wear spikes) so I was surprised but excited. Unfortunately, I had a pretty poor performance running on little sleep and tired legs. So now, surely, my season was done.

However, I kept coming to practice. I loved being there and being around the team and my coach encouraged me to stay and keep training. Things were really winding down now. The next meet was the TFCAofGP Meet of Champions. I hadn’t qualified for this one and I definitely wouldn’t be racing, plus you needed tickets just to get inside the building. But, just as they had before, my coaches had my back. Coach Ames and Dink got me on the bus with a ticket to the meet and I had front row seats to watch the best runners in the area compete. As a budding super fan, this was an unforgettable experience.

LaSalle won the DMR over Archbishop Ryan with a time of 10:31. Penncrest was third and my Upper Dublin teammates were 4^th, just ahead of CB East and anchor Josh Izewski. In the 800, Zack Montijo got his revenge. He ran 1:56.38 to win the gold over Elliot Rhodes and Nick Crits. Our Mike Palmisano finished 5^th in the meet with a time slightly slower than the one he ran back in December. Montijo also ran on the gold medal winning 4x8 which defeated Wissahickon and Cardinal O’Hara.

In perhaps the race of the day, Engineering and Science’s Terrence Lee sat on the back of reigning XC state champ Mark Dennin in the 3k for almost the entire race before he unleashed a blazing fast kick in the closing stages of the race to win in a meet record time of 8:47.93 compared to Dennin’s 8:50.01. It suddenly made Lee a favorite for the title in two weeks at states.

With Meet of Champs in the books, our line-up was basically set for states. All that was left was the Last Chance Meet. Once again, I prepared myself for the end of my season. However, the coaching staff wanted to give me one more race since I had been training so hard for the extra weeks. We gave our top individuals one last chance to improve their seed before states in Pat McLaughlin (mile) and Mike Palmisano (800) and then, in one of the meet’s last events, I got my final race in the 4x800 meters.

It was an odd race. Everyone else had already competed in their individual events and seemed fairly spent. Literally the only reason we were running this relay was so that I could get a chance to compete. No pressure. Naturally, my varsity teammates defaulted me into the anchor role that none of them wanted to have. I taped a couple numbers on my hips and stood at the ready, awkwardly fidgeting among other elite team’s best runners who were way out of my league.

I can still picture the start. Mike led off for us and was chilling near the back of the pack. When he came by at the end of his first lap, he kept turning to me with a goofy smile and almost dancing with his running motion. Then, on the second lap, he did it again. It was ridiculous, but it did make me smile and distracted me from my massive amount of nervous jitters. Then, Mike started racing and he passed basically everyone to hand off alongside first place.

From there, we went steadily backwards. The other guys didn’t have a ton of fight in them. But that was OK, as it put me in a much more comfortable position. I have no clue what place I was in when I got the baton, but I ran as hard as I could, fixating on the North Penn jersey in front of me from super soph Brad Miles and trying as best I could to chase him down[6]. Ultimately, his presence bundled with my teammates’ and coaches’ cheering spurred me to a 2:10 800 split, a new PR and over 15 seconds faster than my best from the previous winter. Couldn’t ask for a much better way to end my season.

But, technically speaking, I still wasn’t done. We drove on the bus home, everyone’s spirits high.. I was excited about my PR, while my teammates were pumped about the state championships that were now just a week away. As I rode happily back to the high school, Coach Dinkins got up at the front of the bus and announced that everyone on the bus would be going to states the next weekend. I looked around in confusion and then I tried to catch my coach’s eye to make sure he knew that I was on the bus.

“Yes, you too, Felix.”[7]

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[1] Fairly unrelated side note, this meet is also my first real memory of Ben Furcht. He was going up against Brad Miles, at this point a legendary titan of a sophomore considering his XC season, and Miles got out to a huge early lead in the 3k. All of a sudden, Furcht comes storming back from out of nowhere on the last lap and beats out Miles by 0.2 seconds. I originally thought it was just someone that Miles had lapped. Turns out Furcht just paced things out perfectly.

[2] We had soooo many guys with penntrack accounts. We might have been the most active team of posters out there. Some of the user names included: lolbbq, gorgeous, binged, NotQuiteMr49, BloodbathMcGrath and _Lorenzi. There’s probably more I’m forgetting, but those jump out.

[3] I’ve technically never confirmed this one. I assumed it was his birth month but it also could have just been the easiest number to press on the keyboard.

[4] His name was Chris Pregler from Central Bucks West. He was a very good 800 runner with a strong kick. Mike ended up finishing 3^rd. And that freshman Kyle Moran? He took 7^th in a 2:02.05.

[5] Again, kind of unrelated, but the Novice 3k that year was won by none other than Ben Furcht.

[6] Miles was doubling as well and seemed just as unenthused as the teammates I was racing with. He really eased up on the last lap and I felt like I was catching up to him. That was motivation for me and probably what dragged me to that PR.

[7] I’m not sure how many guys have ever raced at the Novice Meet and then been an alternate for states in the same season, but it was quite a ride. So you’re probably wondering how this was possible? Well, a number of factors contributed, but the big one was sickness. One of our top guys got mono and another got a bad cold and had to stop training which opened the door for the last kid who kept hanging around at practice to get a de facto alternate spot.