Fast Company

I just could not rank my top four in an order, so I broke it down into a tie with two categories: 1) Fast Company and 2) Great Fun.
So I will start it off with Fast Company. I have two training partners who were the two fastest runners I got to train with on a day to day basis. The first being my Sonoma State team-mate Mike and then the other is a guy I got to know when I moved back home, Dean.

Mike, or Hammerhead as we would call him, was a five time DII All American at 1500, 5000 and XC, as well as participating in the 1992 Olympic Track and Field trials at 5000. The boy did not have great leg speed, but my goodness, he could hammer out work-outs and had a pain thresh-hold that I have never witnessed before or since. Focused and driven, Mike made every work-out the center of the universe and that each step was a matter of life or death. Once after trailing Matt Guisto in a local road race for several miles before having my butt handed to me on a platter, I commented on how I thought Matt was just out for a Sunday stroll, in which Mike grunted, "the good ones don't take Sunday strolls." He could be rather intense at times.

Anyway, Mike and I ran almost every mile together for two years, the fastest two years of running I ever had. We dreamed, schemed and ran fast. Sunday mornings were long runs with team-mates in Annadel State Park, followed by donuts and then watching sports. Mondays were the hardest day of the week with intense track or xc repeats, which lead to a big dinner of some kind of animal flesh and brownies and ice-cream. However, as intense of a guy as he could be, he was very unselfish. In the first race of my senior year in track, Mike paced me to my qualifying time for the NCAA's in a small tri-meet, stepping off the track on the last lap to let my savor the moment. Afterwards when celebrating, all Mike could talk about was my race, never-mind that I would not have had that performance I didn't have him to drag me along.

In 1994, when I first moved back home to Tulare, I was not prepared to encounter anyone who could even come with 2 minutes of me in a race locally. In my first local race after moving back I got a thorough butt-whipping in a small local 8K. Wondering who this red-headed stranger was I did what all distance runners do who want to know someone, "hey, you want to cool down?" I found out Dean and his family had just recently had moved to Tulare and he had just started teaching. He was also an 8:41 steeplechase runner and close to 14 flat 5k guy. Needless to say, he was one fast dude. Even better, he lived only a few blocks away from me and my family.

For the next few years we would meet afterwork and burn up the roads of Tulare and Visalia. Dean only knew two speeds, fast and faster. I actually had to make sure I would schedule two to three days when I ran on my own so my legs could recover. Unfortunately, Dean suffered several injuries, so his racing was limited, but the races we did run together were a blast. In one particular race, a guy came over from San Luis Obispo to run and he was little cocky towards the locals. Oblivious to how fast both Dean and I had ran, he went to the lead. A mile into the race, Dean went to the front with this guy and started talking to him and pushing the pace. At three miles Dean waved me up and then I went on to win as Dean continued to talk to the guy as he was dying on the road reminding him that he should treat the local runners with more respect. Which is why I loved running with Dean, as fast as a runner that he was, he was always and continues to be very humble about his accomplishments. Today, I get the great privilege of coaching his two boys, in which his oldest is my number 1 runner and his other boy, a freshman, is quickly becoming my 2nd best runner.

I sure miss having those two guys push me to faster times! Mike and Dean, thanks fellas for all the fast and good times!
SP