One of Them

I lay on a mildewy, weather hardened pole vault pit as the breezeless evening air grows cool. The Los Angeles twilight gives way to stadium lights on tarnished steel girder stands, like Hollywood set lamps illuminating a movie scene.  The meet announcer's excited voice rises occasionally above the din of the crowd of several hundred assembled in the stands and along the track's edge, a very small gathering given the spectacle about to unfold.

On the other side of the pit lounge members of the Salazar and Schumacher Nike Oregon Project groups, their baby blue Nike warmups standing out.  The two factions sit apart, separated by almost ten feet.  Combined they have the best America has to offer in distance running (ever), together with Mo Farah, the British 10,000 and 5,000 London Olympic champion.  Eight bucks will get you into this seemingly small distance gala at Occidental College in the foothills of Hollywood, CA to see the best in the US and world run rabbited time trial style races.  I can guarantee you that the guy sitting on his porch across the street within earshot of the meet announcer has no idea what's going on.

2800 meters into the race, Puskedra leads.  I'm on the outside (far left) in the white singlet (showing off some luv handels)

Some of the best moments in American running- Sportscenter Top 10 Plays caliber moments  - happen unbeknownst to the uninitiated at small college tracks on pleasant spring evenings in California.  American Records.  World 'A' standards.  Down to the line, six man wide finishes.  Tonight at Oxy, the small crowd cheers occasionally when a well known runner is introduced.  The 1500 heats manage to bring them to their feet during the finish as the noise level rises to a subdued roar.  Where are the television cameras?  The food and merchandise vendors, athlete escorts, grandstands like at the big relay meets?  Our sport's finest wait to compete on a musty pole vault pit.  Across from them, I can't help but feel a little star struck.  But I'm going to have to get over that.  I'm about to race against them.

We pass the mile in 4:16.  During the warm up, my right knee had been flaring up and it hurt to walk.  Now, settled into about fifth place, adrenaline and focus take over and the last thing I'm thinking about is my knee.  Up front Belota Asmeron rabbits the field of 24, his sole mission to put us on World 'A' standard pace.  Somewhere behind me lurks the full might of both Oregon groups.  4:16 is the fastest I've opened a 5000 in, but I'm feeling nothing yet, only anticipation.  Those guys are coming up here soon.

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I woke up suddenly one sultry morning in the summer of 2007 in a University of Wisconsin dorm room.  In the dim light, then Badger harrier Chris Solinsky, my high school cross country camp counselor yelled for me to get out of bed.  "Ready to go?  It's 7:05"  I trusted my watch alarm, now muffled under the bed sheets, to get me up.  Embarrassed, I sprung out of bed, already in my running shorts, and padded after him down the hallway for the morning run.  How could I screw that up?  Solinksy.  The fastest native Wisconsinite ever and my idol throughout high school and beyond.  He'd go on to be a fourteen time All American and five time individual NCAA champion for Wisconsin before following coach Jerry Schumacher to Oregon, where he set the American 10,000 record running for Nike.  I remember looking at his high school marks and being absolutely baffled at how someone could break fifteen minutes on the Ridges Golf Course, our state cross country meet venue.  The newspaper clipping covering the first sub four miles run on Wisconsin soil by Solinsky and team mate Matt Tegenkamp still hangs on my bedroom wall in Milwaukee.

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Now, almost six years later, 2000 miles away, and five laps in, I'm racing him, and he's right behind me.

It's time.  First the Salazar group, their black kits with NOP winged skull insignias roll silently by.  Rupp, then Ritzenheim, then Farah, then Puskedra ambling after.  The Schumacher group, led by Solinski, follows a lap later. The black and blue wave reaches its crest at the front of the race, breaking and jostling as men fall back into position.  For a moment I let myself soak in this experience.  Then I latch on, recalling the pain of Payton Jordan two weeks ago and prepared to fight for it again.  We pass 3000 meters in 8:06, the same split as then.

Two more laps go by.  I can recall little of them.  In the late stages of a race, you experience something like tunnel vision.  It seems as if the brain ceases to lay memories down, so focused on the task of running through the discomfort.  A subtle windup of the pace begins as we near a kilometer to go, and I allow a small gap to form.  Psychologically, the two yards between myself and Puskedra seem like an eternity.  The gap slowly grows until I find myself trailing, bouncing around with others trying to hang on.  Perhaps I let up a little, for just a moment, collecting myself.  That's easy to admit in hindsight.

600 meters separate myself and the finish.  What did you come here for?  I think about my plain white singlet.  No name on my chest.  The money I don't have that I spent to get here.  I think about last year, missing the Olympic trials by two spots in the 5000 and one spot in the 1500.  I'm not representing anything or anyone but myself.  The US 'A' standard is 13:30.  The clock reads exactly twelve minutes.  I need some magic.

That magnetic mecca and its beautiful wafting fragrance that is the finish line finally slaps me awake.  Something deep inside me recalls the rhythm of four minute mile pace, and through the pain my foot strike moves forward to the toes and my head comes up.  I target Puskedra on the backstretch.  200, 150, 100 to go.  I'm slowly gaining.  On the homestretch, long after Mo Farah wins in 13:15, I hold even with Puskedra.  He's an American.  He'll be on the USA 5k list, and could potentially bump me from qualifying.  But unable to catch him, I cross the line in 13:33.13, a five second PR.

Video of the race by Flotrack. "They all became Mobots for a second there"

With this race I draw a little closer.  A little closer to the ability to run with men who before had been untouchable heros to me.  The best of them, talented enough to quickly progress through the levels I've spent many years working through, once would easily lap me in this race.  Now, I'm rounding the final turn as they finish, in sight.  It's time to stop being star struck, even when in Hollywood.  To stop letting gaps form because I'm afraid of their credentials.  It's time to realize with that just a couple more breakthroughs, I'll be one of them.

Payton Jordan Invite

Stanford University,  The Ivy of the West.  I've always loved coming to this sprawling land grant campus with its palm trees, spanish colonial architecture, open spaces, and proximity to some of the coolest tech companies in the world (Google, Facebook, Lockheed Martin). This weekend, runners from all over the country and world are descending on the Angel Cobb track stadium for the dependably consistent weather and great fields at the Payton Jordan Invitational.

The 5000 is Sunday night at dusk.  I land at San Francisco International Airport around noon on Friday, giving myself plenty of time to relax and adjust before the race.  The BART train takes me to Millbrae for a transfer onto Caltrain, which takes me on nice ride down to Palo Alto.  Californians love to talk about their mundane travel arrangements so I thought I'd throw that in there.

I'm staying with a buddy on campus, which turns out to be an enormous asset.  I can jog to the track in about five minutes, eat at the dining hall, and pretend to be a Stanford student for the weekend.  I even have a bike to ride.  On Friday night my friend and I went with some of his buddies to see Michael Bay's new flick Pain and Gain with Mark Wahlberg and the Rock.  What a ridiculous movie.  It provided some inspiration for my race though -  Marky Mark has some good lines.  "My name is Daniel Lugo, and I believe in fitness." "be a doer, not a don't er."  It was a hilarious movie that you should see if you don't mind losing a few IQ points.

All this was a nice break from the typical experience I'm used to at meets.  Hotels make me mildly anxious because I can't help but associate them with races.  Being on a campus around libraries and sunbathing chicks makes me feel at home and coming into Sunday I'm feeling pretty good.

Race Day

Usually when I wake up on race day, the coming experience flashes though my thoughts, followed by an acute surge of nervousness and excitement.  I lay there on the air mattress on the floor of my friend's apartment, feeling the adrenaline course through my veins until it ebbs away.  There's no falling back asleep after that.  Now the body knows something big's about to hit it.  It's part of my preparation.

The 5000 entries for tonight are so deep that my 13:38 seed did not make the fast heat.  The Schumacher clan, Oregon Track club crew, World Cross Country sixth place finisher Ben True, and collegians Diego Estrada, Eric Jenkins and Maverick Darling headline a 5000 field that surely every American distance running fan is drooling over thanks to Flotrack's coverage.  Hanging around on the grass before my warm up I'm surrounded by the who's who of American distance running. (Derek Rubis, if you're reading this, I know you'd love being there)

I'm confident going into this race.  Workouts have been going very well, I've been healthy for a long time, and eight days ago I soloed a 3:44.1 1500 back in Austin.  I haven't raced much lately, especially over longer distances and I'm wondering what going past 3k will feel like.  But I push any questions I have out of my mind and get to the line focused.

Two laps in the pace has settled at 65 seconds per lap, right at 13:32 rhythm.  There's a rabbit leading Nouredine Smail of France and Mitch Goose of Iona.  I'm sitting third.  At the beginning of a 5k, tiny changes in pace are very obvious when the body is still fresh and perceptive.  Even a one second per lap change feels like a lot.  Over the third and fourth laps I feel the tempo slack ever so slightly, prompting Smail  to drop a 63 after we pass one mile in 4:21 and the rabbit steps off.  Goose lets a gap form and I quickly go around and get in Smail's wake as we pull away from the rest of the field.  Going with him is a gamble, but it's the only way of giving myself a chance to run fast.  On the homestretch Smail gestures for me to go around him and lead.  I decide to do so, partially since it's polite, and partially because I might be putting money in the bank for later when I'll need him.

Video of the Race

I lead for about 800 and with a look over my shoulder, Smail re-passes me.  This time I won't be starting another round of lead exchanges because as we approach the 3k, I'm starting to feel the hurt. I come though in 8:07 and pass two miles in 8:40 (technically a 3200 PR) slightly off of Smail, and from there I begin to slowly fade.  I'm quickly in no man's land (Luckily it's no man's land in front of the race and not behind it) and all I can think about is finishing.  In situations like this, runners either grind it out or they die really hard.  I say to myself, "you didn't come here for the first two miles, you came here for the last one."  I'm running 67 second laps, not on pace but not terrible.  You think about the weirdest things in that situation.  Whole wheat pancakes, volleyball nets, spanish class in 6th grade.  You don't hear anything.  The pain tries to suck your thoughts towards it like a tractor beam.  You go through pulses of focus and loss of focus.  I think about my form as it erodes, trying to switch backup systems on, finding anything I can in my legs and body.

Finally the bell is ringing and it's supper time.  I gather myself, consciously relaxing my face and hands, and take a few quick steps as I head into the final 400.  People told me I 'closed hard' after the race, but any kind of kick must have looked fast compared to my strugglefest coming into the bell.  The final 100 I'm hoping to God the rest of the field that I haven't seen for 2 miles isn't running me down as my elbows are flying everywhere, knees are knocking, and face is grimacing.  I cross the line in 13:40.04, the second fastest 5k time of my life, having run a 61 second final lap.

Back on Earth as I cool down, I sort out how I feel about the race and decide I'm pretty happy.  1. I'm very close to my PR 2. I'm proud of how hard I fought 3. It feels SO good to race again.  I realize that I absolutely want to race the five again this season.  The original plan was to switch focus to the 1500 if this race didn't produce 13:30, but I know that next time that last 2k will get done the way it needs to be done.  A hard race effort like this works wonders mentally and physically for the next go.  There's a rule I think every runner should follow: if you absolutely have a desire to race, race.  You never know when the next time you'll be able to comes around.  So next up it's the 5k at Oxy High Performance in L.A. in 17 days.

After the meet John Simons, an old high school rival who now runs for Minnesota and I hit up Pizza My Heart in downtown Palo Alto.  We had the right idea because as we sat eating some nice greasy pizza, what seemed like the whole meet patronized the place. (again Rubis, you would have loved it)  People asking each other how their races went, coaches bullshitting with each other, and the kids working the Sunday night late shift wondering why their place was suddenly so full - it just makes me love the running community.  It also remands me that I probably take the whole thing too seriously.  Nah.

Post Race Interview