Dave

Today I was reading a Facebook post about my junior college coach Dave Bronzan. One of his recent former runners posted, if there was a Dave Bronzan fan page, I would join it. This resulted in many current and former athletes chiming in about our coach. It's amazing to see how one man in a span of 25 years has touched so many lives. Now I am not going to go all George Bailey about Coach Bronzan, but I just can't help but write today about the man who helped guide early on in this running life.

I never called Coach Bronzan coach. He was always Dave to me, since I knew him in high school when he owned the local sporting goods store. Now I could tell many stories about the work-outs, the speeding down the highway while reading race results, the jogger-runner-racer analogies, and countless other fun juicy tidbits about the man, but I am going to share about the moment my running life was changed forever.

Dave always talked about goals and met with each one of his athletes individually to talk about our goals. Now, I had never been much of a top-notch runner but I had set this goal of making the Nor-Cal championships in the 10,000 meters. When I talked to him about this, he thought maybe I should run the 1500, but I had come to the conclusion that if I could run the mile in sub 4:40 then I could run 5:00-5:15 for 6 miles. Not wanting to discourage me, he said we could give it a chance.

To make a long story short, I made the NorCaL championships in the 10,000 meters and here is where the story starts. I had given up red meat, soda and had started running 70-miles per week during the season all because Dave had mentioned that to be good, you had to make sacrifices and run. Run lots of miles. And, when you think you had run a lot of miles, you need to run more. So, for several months I ran, gave up burgers, learned to drink liquids other than Coke and came into the NorCal champs ranked 22nd out of 24 runners. I figured the only chance I had was for the weather to be bad.

Race morning the gods of running smiled and in the middle of May in Sacramento a monsoon erupted and my heart jumped for joy. Before the race, Dave came over to me and said, "you got your wish, now go and get your race." Now, Dave is a very mellow laid back guy, except when it comes to cheering own his athletes. For 25 glorious laps, Dave ran back and forth at the bottom of the bleachers at American River College, jumping up and down, shouting, jumping, shouting, calling out splits, jumping, shouting, all the while standing in about a foot of water. My parents sat in the stands under an umbrella watching the mad-man routine as the water soaked up his pants to his knees, wondering who is this guy? After finishing the race in a huge 45 second pr and barely missing a spot to state, he turned to my parents, who looked on in bewilderment as he exclaimed, that was "brilliant!"

The next Monday I stopped into his store to chat about the weekend and he asked, "how do you feel?" I thought for second and replied, "I feel like I can do anything." "Funny thing," he said, "I never thought you would ever run that fast!" Funny, the only reason I thought I could run that fast was because of all the advice, care, guidance and time he dedicated to helping me become a better athlete and person. A few years later when I made my first NCAA race he was the first person I called. I told him it felt like a dream, in which he answered this time, "this is as real as it gets."

That day in the rain in Sacramento changed my life. Never had a middle aged 40 something guy jump up and down in a puddle because he was excited about my new found passion. I knew then, I would live this running life for the rest of my days. Thanks Dave!

SP