Have you ever notice that coaches say the darndest things sometimes? It is if their lips cannot keep pace with their frontal lobe and then the weirdest things come tumbling off the tip of their tongues? "Go to town!" "Bury him now!" "Put him away!" What do this phrases really mean on their own? I mean, come on, we are running a race, not going shopping or to a funeral or putting away a possession. Yet, as athletes we know exactly what our coach wants us to do, even if we have never heard him or her use the phrase before. Somehow as athletes we have this innate ability to decipher the hidden message that our coaches are sending us through these strange verbal transmissions.
Such was the case my senior year at Sonoma State in our league cross country championship race. We were hosting the meet that year and was favored along with Humboldt State to win our league championship. Our team was having its best season in our school history and I was poised to finish in the top 3 overall. Our top runner, Mike, had been the league champion the past previous two years and was going to take the race out hard at around 4:25 the first mile. Naturally, I was in on this and would know better than to get caught up in the frenzy of the mad dash at the beginning. Our course made a figure 8 around two ponds and was all on trails other than the start and finish on a bike path. Soft rolling hills with two sharp short hills and one gully to cross. It was a challenging, yet very fast 8k course. More importantly, it was our home course and we did not want to lose in our backyard.
The gun blasted and off we flew. The first mile Mike took out in sub 4:30 and I came by at 4:37, looked over at my team-mate Phil and thought "Holy S*&#!" Phil and I were about 20th and 21st place at the mile mark. Mike, sticking to his plan, wanted to put the hurt on the other top runners in order for Phil and I to pick them off one by one over the next 4 miles. I had never gone out that fast before in a cross country race before and was feeling a little apprehension as I slowly began the task of moving up through the field. Then it happened.
Near the two mile mark we crossed a small levee and would turn onto a narrow winding trail and standing at the end of the levee was our coach, Danny Aldridge. At this point, the field had spread out single file and I had moved into 10th place. I was unsure where Phil was, but I knew he could not be far behind. Mike was leading the race, 5 Humboldt, 1 Davis, 1 Chico State and 1 Hayward State runners separated me from Mike, only about 10-12 seconds ahead of me. Doubt was beginning to creep in. Maybe I had been a little too cocky when I told Aldge a couple of weeks before I thought I could take second in our league meet. After all, in front of me were 6-7 All American runners and I had not run anything close to what these guys had ran. Heck, I had never ran two miles this fast before and now I was to keep going for nearly another 3 miles. Who was I fooling? There was no way I could keep this up. And then I heard it. "The ducks are on the pond! The ducks are on the pond!" "What? The ducks are on the pond. What am I, Elmer Fudd?"
Aldge was standing at the end of the levee yelling at me, "The ducks are on the pond." Now, it is true, there were ducks on the two ponds, but now it was time for me to go hunting and take down some other two-legged birds that were in full flight and I had better get at it if I wanted to succeed. My confidence restored, I spent the next 3 miles taking aim and knocking off my opponents one by one. The last with only 600 meters to go. That day Mike won, I took second and Phil, also over the last 400 meters picked off our opponets and finished 3rd. A historic 1-2-3 finish for Sonoma State, yet, due to our 4th guy not feeling well, we lost the team title to Humboldt State. Oh well, you can't win them all.
Until the next time, keep running, stay healthy, and remember, duck hunting season is just around the corner.
SP
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