Having a plan is one thing, having a back-up plan is another, and lastly, and most importantly is executing the plan. Going into a recent 24-hour run, my plan was to run a totally controlled race and manage my time well in order to be able to make a move to reach one of the top 3 distances on the team and thus score for the U.S. A. 24-Hour Run National Team. My back-up plan was to run whatever distance or time necessary to break 3, age group 60-64 American Records en route.
The race, the International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU) was being held in Seoul, South Korea as the 24-hour World Challenge. The team event drew 24 countries with men’s teams and 11 countries supporting women’s teams. The American women had a legitimate shot at the podium and indeed were contenders up through the 22-hour mark when they were passed by the German contingent and lost out on the bronze medal by just a couple of miles.
The men had placed 4th the year before when running in Canada. Although the team fell apart late in the race, everyone stuck to the original plan. The plan was simple; everyone would run their own race and do the best that they could do on that particular day.
As you all know, a lot can happen over the course of a day. And on this particular day there were many surprises. I was the first to succumb. After having a picture perfect run, despite the high heat and humidity and a tough course, I suddenly experienced severe knee pain. Having run nearly 75 miles in the first 12 hours and covering most of the laps in around 10 minutes it now took over 30 minutes to get around the circuit. I pulled into get some medical attention and the best they could do was wrap it up and hope I could hang on. At that point I was running in the 3rd position for the team and we were doing great as a team. The guy in first position was among the leaders.
This is where sticking to the plan came in. The guy in the 4th position was now in 3rd as the medical team advised me to stop running. With him now being in scoring position he began to reach a little deeper and try to live up to the plan, that of running the best he could on that day. I left the race site to get a teammate something he needed and upon my return I saw another teammate heading for his rental car. When I asked what was going on he replied he felt like he was going to pass out and could not continue.
He had been our lead runner and because of the distance he had accrued our team remained in 3rd place. The next two runners needed to step it up if they were to hold onto 3rd. And they did. With just hours remaining they pushed harder and took no walking breaks. I monitored the teams that were closing the gap as 2 runners were scoring to other teams’ 3 runners. The guy who had to leave had a substantial cushion, and had he continued to run, the outlook would not have been quite so bleak.
We knew it was going to be a close race and we thought that the two scoring members, that still counted and were running to the end, actually held off the other teams that were bearing down on the U.S. A. team that only had 2 scoring members in the race. When they announced that the U.S.A. had taken the bronze medal I was elated. Having managed the team and been a team member for 5 out of 5 years the IAU 24-hour WC had been in existence, this was too good to be true, especially when the chips were stacked in someone else’s favor.
After receiving the bronze medals and the congratulations of the other countries, I was approached by an official and informed that a protest had been filed. After reviewing the protest by the German team I agreed that the medals belonged to them. The official timing company had not included the partial lap run, following the final passage of the finish line and up to the 24-hour mark. The team lost by less than 400 meters—one lap around a standard track—after 24 hours of running. But the thing I was most proud of was the way everyone had stuck to our plan of giving the best we could. Without having that in place we would not have reached the medal stand, not even for a brief moment.
See you in a few miles….roy