I’d like to take a moment to expound on JJ’s last question and my answer (below):
JJ- Q. what advice can you offer runners wanting to get the best out of themselves?
My advice is to find one friend or one training partner or one coach with whom you can be perfectly honest about your hopes and dreams (and your means of reaching them). Tell him/her everything that is on your mind and in your heart and then get out there and run until you are blind.
Throughout my running life I have had the amazing good fortune of finding just the right training partner to fit each particular phase of my life. It’s almost as if there were a guiding hand leading me to these people – my comrades, my fellow travelers, my running soul-mates.
I had Marla Daniel (when I was a freshman at UNC) who, in the middle of her long run, would swing by my dorm room on Sunday afternoons – forcing me to run a brisk 5-miler (what I still call “Marla-pace” to this day!) and NOT sleep the afternoon away. From her I learned the importance of “don’t miss.”
As an upperclassmen, the ever-enthusiastic and determined young-un, Holly Murray, taught me how to handle my nerves. “Don’t ruin it by getting nervous” she wisely advised before the NCAA cross-country championships. She was a 3-time All-American in cross and is, today, joyfully coaching at a high school in Philly.
Right after college, I trained with (Hail!)Fredonia’s Bernard “The Dude” Prabucki, probably the toughest, most focused cat ever to cross my path. We would go to the track in the evenings and after my solo-warmup, he would time my intervals; then I’d cool down with him on his warm-up before timing his intervals. He once talked me through how to make a hill flat with my mind. It really works if you concentrate hard enough (you know, like those people who can bend spoons with their mind?). Bernie ran 13:45 for 5k in 1988 on fewer than 70 miles per week … but his hard days would CRUSH a normal man. From Bernie I learned to match my physical intensity with my mental.
Next, I met Austin P. Guiles in a bible study. We have trained together on and off for 20 years … never once running out of things to talk about. He can run fast or long on trail or track or just stand and chat in a parking lot; I always enjoy his company. Once on a run we saw two abandoned bags of fresh groceries lying on the side of a busy road, so I challenged Austin P. to use the groceries as a storyteller’s “prompt.” What a story he told! He wove this tale over hill and dale and back again, lasting the entire run. From Austin, Godfather of my first-born, I learned of the fellowship of runners.
Through Jo White, British amazon (2:02 800m; 4:06 1,500m), I found a coach – Harry Wilson – but I also discovered my ambition. Jo wanted to be FAST. She had a thrilling/dangerous? live-on-the-edge approach to running that made my college career seem like a neighborhood game of kick-the-can. Jo made me see if you want to run with the big dogs, get off the porch.
After the intensity of Jo and Harry, I needed a break. I started coaching myself; I ran alone, read a lot, joined the Catholic church, got a job, went to plays, dated a missionary, read some more … and waited for the next training partner to come along.
Then came Betsy! Betsy Kempter was the “one friend, one training partner, with whom I could be perfectly honest about my hopes and dreams (and my means of reaching them). I told her everything that was on my mind and in my heart and then WE got out there and ran until we were blind.” She was a 2:37 marathoner and I was a 3k-5k track runner, but we met in the middle with equal passion and work ethic to wring every ounce of talent we could out of each other. We sweated, grunted, spit and howled. I can still hear Betsy’s voice out over the top of a crowd of runners in a road race, “GOJOAN!” as if it were one word. I would respond, like an animal in the woods hearing her kind, “GOBETSEEEEEEEEEEy!”
We trained and traveled and raced alongside one another for nearly 7 years. She and her husband, Bryan, taught me to bring my own freshly-ground coffee, with one-cup filters, to races. They had yummy “door food” at all times in their truck with goose-down pillows in the back for napping. Betsy and Bryan were in the audience on the backstretch of my 10k at the 1996 Olympic trials. I had instructed them to cheer, “There’s always Summer Breeze!!” (a dinky road race in Charlotte that we loved to run) if they saw I was in trouble. Luckily, my friend, my partner, only had to howl, “GOJOAN! GOJOAN!”
Those were pure, happy days of running … two she-wolves in the wild. I miss her.
[...] Since around 1986 I have been going to the track at 5:45pm on Wednesday nights either to run a work-out or coach one. In the early days, it was just Austin P. and me doing the training sessions my British coach, Harry Wilson, mailed to me every three weeks (on that super-thin air mail paper … oooh, how exciting to feel the weightlessness of that missive!). Later, some other men joined the group – all duffers, like me now, training for the local Godiva summer Track club all-comers series – and one other “fast chick,” Betsy. I don’t know who came up with the name Team Wednesday, Betsy or me, but it stuck. We have been calling the Wednesday night training crew Team Wednesday ever since. There were some lean years after I retired from “elite” racing (in 2000); I think at one point John Hinton and my husband, Dave, were the only two members. And, back then, I didn’t even go the track to time them b/c I was home with my little ones; I phoned in the work-outs, so I was there in spirit. John and Dave were like two old priests, keeping the prayer vigil going late into the night – taking turns leading intervals and sharing the burden of keeping the candle lit. [...]
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