The biggest problem I had as an adult-onset athlete was that my closets weren’t big enough to hold all the race t-shirts I was collecting. Every race gave out t-shirts, mostly cotton in the early years and technical shirts later on. Every shirt had a story, and none could simply be given away or—dare I say it—thrown away.
Some shirts, of course, meant more because the events themselves meant more. The long-sleeved cotton t-shirt from my first half-Ironman triathlon was reserved for special occasions such as marathon expos. When I wore it everyone knew, or I hoped everyone knew, that I wasn’t just a marathoner; I was also a triathlete.
The shirts came to define me as an athlete as much as the training did. Once I had a decent collection of t-shirts I could decide who I wanted to be that day, or what kind of athlete I wanted other people to think I was that day. If I was feeling like a long-distance athlete, I might drag out my Marine Corps Marathon finisher’s shirt. If I was feeling a need to connect with other runners around me, I might drag out one of my favorite local race t-shirts, like the one from the Franklin Classic or the Tennessee Park Series.
What the shirts did, as much as anything, was identify me as a part of a community. I was a runner. I belonged. I’m a big motor sports fan—I like NASCAR, IndyCars, Formula 1, you name it. I understood why someone would wear a t-shirt with the number or image of his or her favorite driving personality emblazoned on the back. Like me, they wanted to belong.
In an odd way, getting t-shirts became the driving force in my training. I was like a coin collector. I had to have shirts from all the distances that I had run.
The other great aspect of t-shirts is that they never identify you by your finishing position or your age group. When I wore my Panama City Half-Ironman shirt, no one knew that I had finished dead last, nearly four hours after the winner. So I began chasing t-shirts instead of trophies.
I was very lucky to live just outside Nashville, Tennessee, at the time that the racing bug really bit me. Tennessee has a wonderful series of state park runs that are held throughout the winter months.
The distances for the state park races varied between 4 miles or so and about 9 miles. The races were never big; usually about a hundred people entered one, give or take. There was no electric timing or official photographers. These events were just a bunch of folks getting together for a race.
For those of you not familiar with Tennessee, it’s about 500 miles from the west side of the state to the east. Nashville is just about dead center. That meant I could race all over the state.
At most of the races, especially those at either end of Tennessee, the participants tended to be local runners. It wasn’t likely that someone living in Memphis was going to drive eight hours to run a 5-mile race in Bristol. But there were other hard-core Middle Tennessee runners besides me who traveled to both sides of the state.
One of those runners was a guy whose name I never knew, even though I saw him at races for years, whom I simply called “the Leprechaun Man.” He was always dressed in green: green shorts, green shirt, and in the colder months a green stocking cap. The fact that he was only about 5 feet tall added to the image.
The Leprechaun Man was probably 10 or 15 years older than I was, so my guess is that he was in his late 50s or early 60s at the time. He wasn’t fast, although he was faster than I was, and he always had a smile on his face.
Many of the state park runs were hilly—it was Tennessee, after all—and it was in one of those races that I learned a valuable lesson from the Leprechaun Man. He taught me how to run hills.
We were near each other during one race, and I had managed to get a bit of a lead on him going up a particularly steep hill. I dug deep, pumped my arms, shortened my stride, leaned into the hill, and huffed and puffed my way to the top.
When I finally reached the top, exhausted, I allowed myself to relax and just let gravity carry me down the other side. I opened up my stride a little and coasted down the hill.
Behind me I could hear the Leprechaun Man screaming at full volume, “I’m a downhill runner!” He came flying by me as if I were tied to a tree. I must have had 50 yards or more on him as we started up the hill, but he put that and more on me before we reached the bottom.
He wasn’t going to waste his energy pounding up the hill. It didn’t make sense. The amount of energy that I was putting out wasn’t yielding a faster pace; it was just sending my heart rate soaring and my breathing into overdrive.
The Leprechaun Man’s approach to this challenge was exactly the opposite of mine. He walked up the hills at whatever pace he could maintain without going into oxygen debt, and then he picked up his pace on the downhill, where gravity became his friend.
I caught him on the flats between hills and started making my way up the next hill the same way I had before: arms pumping, head pounding, gasping for breath. Ten yards past the crest of the hill, here he came again, screaming at the top of his lungs. Again, he went right by me.
This went on for a few more hills until I wasn’t able to catch him on the flats and I had to push even harder to pass him on the uphills when he walked. He never looked over, but I knew he knew he was outsmarting me. Sure enough, in time I couldn’t catch him on the flats or on the uphills, and he was gone.
I’d like to tell you that I learned my lesson from him during that first race, but I didn’t. I just became more determined to beat him. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that his strategy of energy management was brilliant.
It was also during this t-shirt-collecting, race-every-weekend period that I learned just how competitive I am and how fierce the competition is at the back of the pack. You never get to see these battles on television, but I can assure you that they are as bitter as anything going on in front, and the rivalries are just as intense.
I trained at the same facility as a guy we all called Big Larry, who was every bit of 6 foot 4 and barrel-chested. Big Larry worked out harder than anyone else I have ever seen. He once actually broke a stair machine because he was pushing down so hard.
Big Larry and I raced together for years. We would often line up side by side. Once the gun sounded, though, Big Larry was long gone. It wasn’t unusual in the early years for him to be out of my sight before we got to the first mile marker.
Big Larry was the gold standard as far as I was concerned. I tried to imitate his workout ethic even though there was no way to equal his effort. I modeled myself after him. He was everything I wanted to be.
I marked my improvement by how long I could keep Big Larry in sight at the races. If I got to the first mile marker and could still see Big Larry, I knew I was off to a good start. As I got faster, I was able to keep Big Larry in sight for more miles. I was measuring myself against him at every race.
I still remember the first race that I actually saw Big Larry finish. He was well ahead of me, but I was close enough that I saw him crossing the finish line. It occurred to me then that maybe, just maybe, I could beat Big Larry.
Race after race I tried, and I could never stay with him, but I think Larry figured out what I was trying to do. I think he knew I was gunning for him.
At one local 5K, I was determined that this would be the day I’d get him. I had trained well and was feeling strong. We lined up side by side, and when the gun went off, I committed to staying with him stride for stride. And I did. I knew the pace was off the charts for me, but I was going to hang in there. The first 400 yards were a blur. It seemed to me that Larry was picking up the pace, testing me. A half mile into it, I was way outside my comfort zone. My feet didn’t seem attached to my legs. We were on fire.
As we approached the first mile clock, I could see the time. We were running at a sub-7-minutes-per-mile pace. I had never even come close to that pace in training. I looked over at Big Larry and said, “I can’t run this fast!” He looked over, smiled, and said, “Neither can I.”
As we ran past the clock I sensed that Big Larry was about to slow down. Surely he knew that neither of us could sustain our current pace. He looked like he was going to ease up, so I, in a move of good sportsmanship, slowed down myself.
But he didn’t slow down. He tricked me.
By then it was too late. I had broken my stride and lost my rhythm, and there was nothing I could do but watch Big Larry take off. He had looked like he was going to slow down. He had sounded like he was going to slow down. He just didn’t slow down.
I vowed that day that I would beat him. He had not only outrun me, he had outsmarted me. I couldn’t tolerate it.
At another 5K a few weeks later, I was ready to take my shot again. This time, though, I had a completely different race strategy. I wasn’t going to go head-to-head with Big Larry from the start. I was going to wait and outkick him at the finish.
In the opening mile I fell back just a little and put 5 or 10 people between Big Larry and me. I didn’t want him to know where I was, or how close I was. In the second mile I kept the gap even between Big Larry and me. I was running strong, feeling good, and it seemed as if the plan was working. Larry had no idea where I was.
When we made the final turn and I could see the finish line, I knew this was it. It was go time! Big Larry was less than 10 yards ahead of me, with only about 100 yards to go.
I put my head down and gave it everything I had. With about 50 yards to go, I came up on Big Larry. He looked down but didn’t say a thing. I had the momentum now and slowly pulled away. I crossed the finish line about 10 yards ahead of Big Larry.
When I turned around to see him, I expected to see the same smile I had always seen on his face when he had beaten me. It wasn’t there. His head was down. His shoulders drooped. He looked defeated.
It was never the same between Big Larry and me after that race. We saw each other all the time, even raced together on a relay team once, but I had broken some unspoken rule. I wasn’t ever supposed to be better than he was.
I learned a lot about myself in those early years of collecting t-shirts. I learned that I liked passing people much more than I liked being passed. I learned that you don’t have to win a race to feel like you’ve won.
I learned that you can be beaten and not be defeated. I learned that you could have a quiet dignity about your own effort, which has nothing to do with anyone else’s effort. I learned that comparing myself to anyone else was a fool’s game. I could measure myself against the standard set by other people, but I couldn’t make them responsible for my progress. I couldn’t judge myself by their achievements.
As an athlete, I had to learn to become my own standard. That awareness began to seep into the rest of my life. I couldn’t compare my salary, or the size of my house, or the importance of my job to anyone else’s in order to know whether or not I was successful.
Racing became a classroom for me, a classroom in which the teachers didn’t stand at the front of the room and lecture but instead gave all that they had in full public view. Their sweat and their effort gave greater meaning to mine. We were learning from each other.
Eventually, though, the t-shirt collection got out of control. There simply wasn’t any room for more, so I collected them for a yard sale. I didn’t just stack them; I went through each shirt and remembered every event as if it had happened that morning.
Late in the day a woman pulled up and asked how many t-shirts I had. I told her there were about 150. She asked how much I wanted for the whole lot.
When I asked why she wanted them, she explained that she had a little car-washing business, and the cotton shirts would be perfect for drying off the windows and cleaning wheels.
I could barely move. She wanted to take 150 memories of the greatest days in my life and use them on greasy wheels and bug-splattered windshields. I was speechless.
Eventually she put $100 in my hand and motioned to her son to start putting the shirts into the bed of their pickup. It was over. They were gone.