Doubles and Triples I Have Known

On the DyeStat New England forum, a debate has been raging about whether the Bay State League should permit doubling in the distance events. Duh. Of course it should, but I'm not going to write about that today.

Instead, the whole discussion has brought back memories of dramatic doubles (and triples!) I have seen with my own eyes or run myself. In my experience, serious distance runners are drawn to such challenges as a way of testing the limits to their powers of endurance and focus. There's no doubt that doubling provides an experience that's hard to get in a single race, and hard to erase from memory as time passes.

So without further double-talk, here are five examples of the multiple-race experience:

1. Barnicle the Freshman

It was a pleasant day in early October 2001, and Newton North was about to run a cross-country meet at Cold Springs Park. As I recall, we were running against Braintree and Dedham. Braintree had recently beaten Brookline in a very close meet, and I was expecting our meet to be just as competitive. I was talking with one of the upperclassmen on the team, and he said that he hoped Chris Barnicle wasn't tired from gym class that morning. With a sinking feeling, I asked him what he was talking about. He proceeded to tell me that the gym teacher had had all the kids run a mile that morning, and Chris had decided he wanted to go for the freshman record (it was news to me that there was a NN freshman mile record). Anyway, Chris had warmed up for a couple of miles and then run a 4:51 mile... in gym class... the day of a cross-country meet.

I was livid, of course, and when I saw Chris, I chastised him for his poor judgement. Privately, I hoped he would be able to run the race and not finish too far back. I figured we needed him to be in our top five.

He won, of course, running 17:42, leading a Newton North sweep of the top four places. He did admit to being a little bit more tired than usual at the end of the race and promised not to "double" again. I thought to myself: it's going to be an interesting four years.

Polgar the Beast

One of the high points of Newton North track history was the school's victory in the distance medley at the 2005 Penn Relays. The team of David Polgar (1200), David Slifer (400), Jed Carpenter (800), and Barnicle (1600) ran 10:04.15, which was the best time in the nation that year. That was on Friday afternoon. With Coach Blackburn, the team flew back to Massachusetts Friday night, and got up early Saturday to compete at the State Relays. The day after running a superb 3:06 in the 1200, David Polgar ran two competitive 1600 legs the next day. The first, in about 4:26, helped the NN team take second to Lexington in the 4x1600 relay. The second, in about 4:24, anchored Newton North to victory in the DMR.

David's performance was particularly memorable because he was not a high-mileage kind of guy who had 60-70 mpw to fall back on. I'm convinced he ran those three races in less than 24 hours on pure stubborn competitiveness.

John Barbour and the Ridiculous XC Doublee

John Barbour is a local guy who has competed for many years for the Greater Lowell Road Runners. In 2002, at the age of 48, Barbour competed at the USATF New England Masters XC championships, finishing 3rd in the 8K race at Franklin Park. His time was 26:19 (5:20 / mile pace), just seven seconds behind the winner.

It was an outstanding performance and a harbinger of good things to come (he would win the National Over-50 XC championship two years later on the same course), but on that Sunday he wasn't finished. His club was missing a runner for the open 10K race, and John volunteered to run. About 90 minutes after the masters race finished, Barbour ran the open race, finishing 45th in 33:56 for 10K (5:32 / mile pace).

That XC double -- 8K in 26:19 / 10K in 33:56 within two hours -- at age 48 -- still boggles my mind.

The Great July 4th Road Race Binge

The year was 1988 and I was 30 years old.

My friend Rick and I had been looking for Road Races on July 4th, and we noticed that there was a 7:00 a.m. race in Hingham. We figured if we ran that race, there'd be plenty of time to run another. And then we had this crazy idea, to see if we could run three. We enlisted Rick's girlfriend as a driver, and early on the fourth, we headed to Hingham in high spirits.

The first race was 4.6 miles, and I won it, running about 23 minutes or so (it might have been a short course). After a longer-than-planned cool down (we had a misunderstanding about our rendezvous point with Rick's girlfriend) we drove speedily to Needham, where the annual town day 3 mile race was scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m. We ran together, finishing in 2nd and 3rd, running about 16:00. There was a local Needham guy in front of us, and we decided we should let him win because at the time, the race was for Needham residents only and we had kind of lied to get into the race. To this day, I regret not outkicking that guy and taking the win.

As soon as we finished, we didn't even cool down, but instead drove the ten minutes or so to the start of the Dedham 10K race, which started at 10:00 a.m. That race was very hard (it was now about 80 degrees out), and I ended up running about 32:50 and finishing 3rd.

After three hours, I had three medals, three race t-shirts, and a plaque we got for winning the 3-man team title at the Dedham race (we had one other club member run for us there). I still have the plaque.

In my running log, I recorded this note: "Well, there goes the summer."

The Hood-to-Coast Relay

In New England, there is the Green Mountain Relay, but the mother of all multiple-leg stage relays is the Hood-to-Coast Relay in Oregon.

In 1994, my club (Cambridge Sports Union) fielded a twelve-person co-ed team for the Hood-to-Coast relay. The race is organized as 36 separate legs -- three legs for each runner on a team. The individual legs range from 4 to 7 miles, which means that each runner runs three separate 4M-7M races within 12-13 hours.

Our team began racing at 7:30 p.m. on a Friday night. The first leg drops 2000 vertical feet, and if you think that's a good thing, well it's not. Our man on the first leg, Keith Pijanowski had quads of steel, or he never would have survived his subsequent races. Other heroes from our team included Sue LaChance, a tireless runner who ran three superb legs, her husband John, a constant source of inspiration and good sense (and you need a lot of competence and good sense in a race like this), my long-time training partner Terry, who successfully navigated the darkest, most desolate leg of the race at about 3:00 a.m., and Terry's wife Sue -- our field general.

I started my first leg -- a 10K stage through the suburbs of Portland -- shortly after midnight. My next leg started around 6 a.m., about 55 miles closer to the Oregon Coast. My final leg began just before noon. By the time it was over, I had learned a lot about myself and my team. Specifically, I learned how tough my teammates were, and how much I enjoyed traveling hundreds of miles with them, stuffed in a couple of vans, sleeping a couple of hours at a time in fields, and supporting each other as we carried a baton from the mountains to the sea.

It was one of the best race experiences of my life.