True Inspiration

I have a story for all of you out there about one of the most amazing races I have ever witnesed in person. There was only one person in this race. Not anyone famous on a global, national, or even state scale. A man with just a 2:08 800m PR from a small college known as Muhlenberg. His name, for the sake of protection, will be Kid.

Now it was an ordinary Friday night at Muhlenberg College. Some members were relaxing around after a solid workout, others were enjoying the taste of an alcoholic beverage. It is college after all and that stuff goes on a lot. So Kid was drinking, played a few drinking games, and was about 8 beers deep when our crew took a walk over to our on campus eating establishment GQ. Now Kid sat down and, the tank that he is, ate a hardy helping of a quesdilla. Somehow the conversation at the table turned, as most often it does when sitting at a table with me, to running.

The exact conversation that led up to this point was shaky, but, ultimately, I said something to Kid to the effect of, I would give you 50 dollars if you ran a 2:12 right now. Well folks in Allentown, PA at around 1 o'clock on a snowy night you would not expect someone to take you up on a half joking offer. But Kid was confident that he could do it. Was this confidence from his liquid confidence he had ingested earlier that night? That much was not quite clear, but the confidence was undeniable.

So Kid proceeeded to go outside to go for a warm up accompanied by his good friend 3s company who had had a similar amount to drink that night. 3s company could not make it very far into the warm up, maybe 2 mintues, before turning around and coming back. So my confidence that Kid would fail at the task of running 2:12 was all but affirmed.

But Kid continued to warm up, and after deciding breaking in to the school lockeroom was not the smartest idea, decided to go to his friend Lion Paw's room. Lion Paw was in the middle of entertaining a lady friend by Kid was unpreturbed. He borrowed spikes from Lion Paw that were missing 6 out of the 10 spikes from the bottom, including all of them on his left foot.

But still Kid was confident. He came back to our table at GQ and gathered us up to head over to our outdoor track. My friend Space Jam decided to split the pay off with me 25 and 25 if he succeeded, but obviously we were both fairly confident he would not. The bets as we walked over to the track as our group were not how fast he would go, but how far would he make it before he gave up.

It was chilly and snowy for all of us as we walked to the track. Kid hopped the fence. The rest of us realized the gate was open and went around. We stood at the track in the dark. It is important also to realize that our track currently has a sink hole being fixed in lane one. Meaning there were barriers out to lane three on the home stretch for about 10m. This would only add to the problems Kid was facing.

He did a stride and some high knees and approached the line. He took off both his sweatshirt and sweat pants to reveal neon yellow women's running shorts and a shirtless musclar figure approach the line. My friend Sam borrowed a camera phone from Girl to film.

I started my watch when Kid took off and all of us together started to cheer. Ahead of time we had agreed that we would tell him his 400 split was 65 regardless in order to ensure maximum effort. As Kid ran he looked like he was moving quick, estimating the 200m split at about 32-33 seconds. As he approached the line I read off 63, 64, 65. My friends looked at me, questioning if I had lied. I turned back and said, nope he's actually on pace!

The crowd of us 4 was jumping around and screaming as he ran around the track. The official split was 65 high so he would really have to push. He came around on to the final straightaway still on pace, our section going crazy. Sam gave out a cheer of "Do You Believe in Miracles" as Kid ran to the line and the watch stopped. 2:10.84. A negative split performance within 2 seconds of his PR in not at all ideal conditions.

Never before had I wanted to run like did just then. It was a true gutsy performance that admittedly probably wasn't the smartest move for Kid or any of us, but it was worth every cent that we paid up after he ran. Kid is looking forward to using this money for his Metallica concert.