Alumni Race

On Saturday, September 22, I returned to Williams College where I spent four years of my life. I have been gone one full year; enough time for two new unfamiliar classes to enter, and two familiar classes to leave.

It’s a funny mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. As I walk through the campus, some people stare at me just a little too long. Are they people with some vague recognition of me? Or are they people that have never seen me before and recognize that face as the unfamiliar outsider, the non-student among the 2000 that stands out.

The campus is changing too. The unending college construction never leaves, but seems to migrate instead. It has crawled to another section of campus, tearing into the earth, digging a pit to put a building in. It waits to crush Sawyer library and start anew.

I returned to Williams for vacation, to see friends and professors, and, of course, to race in the Williams XC alumni race. Last year I won the race rather handily and I saw no reason why I wouldn’t do the same this year. I just brought new spikes and I was eager to break them in before XC club nationals in December.

More than my shoes would be different this year. Some of my former teammates forewarned me about the competition. Dartmouth, a division I school, had sent their top man, and Hamilton had a super star who had won the steeplechase the previous year as a freshman. This D3 Kenyan sensation, Peter Kosgei, had some connection to the Williams team in that he knew Edgar, a sophomore at Williams, someone I had never overlapped with. No one warned me about Jimmy Butcher. Sorry Jimmy. Perhaps they thought I should have known you hadn’t graduated yet. (I truly thought you had.) The warnings I was given were very helpful and made a painful race less painful than it could have been by preventing me from doing something arrogant and stupid while racing elite competitors.

Before the race I warmed up with Fellow alumni Sam VV who had been in China for two years, and Jacob Eisler who had been abroad at Oxford for a number of years. I even got a hand in on the team bear toss. On the line the alumni were given their own box. We even fielded a seven man team.

I sprung off the line eager to get right up to the front and settle in with the leaders. Unfortunately, I found the pace quite brisk; a pace I believed to be highly unsustainable, so I didn’t leap right to the front of the pack. It took me about a half mile to edge my way up. And when I got to the front pack, seeing the expected crowd (Butcher, Dartmouth, and the Hamilton runner) distancing themselves from everyone else, I still thought the pace was unsustainable, but at this early point in the race I assumed that these guys wouldn’t really be able to hang on that fast the entire race. I moseyed on up behind them and tried to settle in.

We completed the base ball loop and swung towards the first trail loop. I felt exhilarated by the cheers from all the Williams runners and alumni. Anonymity in road races can have its benefits, but nothing beats a good cheering squad. I especially liked hearing my coach’s words of encouragement standing out above the rest of the crowd’s yelling, just like old times.

Up the hill before the woods I slowed down a bit, giving the others some distance. I gained it back as we crashed into the woods, rolling over the hills, dust and woodchips flying up in the air behind us. The steep, short little down-hills jarred my legs and sucked my momentum right before all the steep short up-hills. The Dartmouth runner continued to lead and the rest of us eagerly keyed off him. We emerged from the woods briefly to another cheering squad before diving back into the darkness in the second woods loop.

I naively thought, "Well, Butcher is still here and I kept up with him in college, we can’t be going all too fast." At some point in the third mile Jimmy dropped away, never to be seen again. I believe he ended up finishing 9th. In the fourth mile as we emerged from the woods and curled down the steep hill, the Hamilton runner, Kosgei, and I began running side by side, each of us looking over a shoulder of the Dartmouth runner greedily, ready to pounce. We had slowed from our original pace but Kosgei and I were ready to accelerate again.

We came out and completed another loop of the baseball diamonds. And then repeated our original path back onto the trails. On the down-hills of the trails I put in a surge and left the Dartmouth runner behind, taking the lead. Kosgei matched my speed and followed closely. I lead him through the trees trying to use the unencumbered path ahead of me to the best of my advantage, cutting all the tangents, milking all the energy I could from the down-hills. I lead him through the trees and then out again, hearing more words of encouragement from Williams runner/fans as I went.

Then back to the second trail portion with the big hills on the course. I lead up the hills. Normally I would have backed off, but this was the last mile, and in any case I didn’t think the draft was very important in this shaded loop. We emerged from the trees, 800 or 1000 meters to go and I continued leading, pushing the pace as much as I (dared) thought was reasonable in order to save a little for a kick at the end. Kosgei kept right on my shoulder.

I don’t like to think too much in races. I don’t like to have the loud voice of consciousness in my head while I’m running. I prefer the feeling of my awareness residing in a more primitive part of my brain that is more in touch with my feet and my legs and my swinging arms. And though I’ve never seen any data to back up this notion, I wonder if this primitive brain doesn’t burn less energy than the loud voice in the theater in my mind, leaving more sugars for my leg muscles. Whether or not this is the case, I needed a plan for the last 2 or 3 hundred meters so I consulted the voice and decided that there were two possibilities.

In one scenario, Kosgei lets me lead into the stiff wind that we face for 200 meters before the 90 degree left hand turn with only 100 meters remaining before the finish and then he tries to swing around the corner and out kick me. The other possibility is that he tries to sprint earlier. If he sprints earlier I decided I’ll let him lead and match speed right behind him and then try to out kick him as we reach the corner. If he lets me lead into the wind, I will do my best to hold on to the small head start I will have going around the turn.

I’m not fully fatigued yet, but I’ve certainly been putting the pressure on ever since I took the lead and that is starting to wear on my legs. Around the grassy Greylock track we go and I hear the Hamilton coach tell his runner to go. Kosgei puts on a burst of speed and passes me.

I match his speed, running right in his shadow. The wind boxes at my ears so I know he is feeling it. We hit the turn and we both kick. The fans form a gauntlet, beating us with cheers.

I accelerate straight up to top speed and so does he. Unfortunately, I can’t even match his speed and I'm slightly behind him. He accelereates and is even pulling away slightly. I can’t squeeze anything more out of my legs. I crossed the line second with a personal best on this course 25:09. Peter Kosgei of Hamilton won in 25:07. That time on that course made me very happy with my training. Now all I have to do is follow through until Club Nationals in December.

Results and the official Williams write-ups can be found here:

Men's race

Women's race