Gabe Jennings is Not Done Yet

My son Loren is not a track fan, alas, but he still remembers bits and pieces from our trip to the 2000 Olympic Trials in Sacramento. Specifically, he remembers Gabe Jennings, who won the 1500m at those trials.

Gabe Jennings is not, perhaps, the most famous miler in the U.S. these days, but he won a place in our hearts and memories for being... well... unique. Most runners talk about their training and racing in conventional platitudes, but Jennings talked about running like a mystic. For example, here's a snippet from his USATF bio page:

"[Jennings] runs to a rhythm, sometimes singing in the middle of a race. He's been a drummer since he was young and majored in music at Stanford before changing to mathematics...sees his life in three stages; athletics, music and philosophy...says his 'greatest fear is fear itself, and my greatest dream is that I will stop dreaming altogether and just live.'...says his heroes aren't people like Prefontaine or Salazar but others like Michael Stember, Jason Pyrah, Jason Lunn and his teammates and competitors - runners in the here and now..."

Loren told me he still remembers watching a post-race interview of Jennings in which he started singing out the rhythm of the race... "boom boom BOOM" ... He has been known to thank "...the water, the trees, and the great spirit" as well as the fans.

(For a true example of Jennings on camera, check out the video of Jennings' post-race interview at the 2000 Trials on SpeedEndurance.com. It's the first video on the page.)

After winning the Trials in 2000, Jennings struggled. He ran poorly in 2001, struggled in school after changing his major to Mathematics, and failed to graduate from Stanford. He lost motivation. He went on a biking Odyssey, traveling from California to Brazil, getting robbed, contracting hepatitis. Track fans thought of him as a has-been, a waste of talent, an irrelevancy in the new world of Bernard Lagat, Alan Webb, and other younger runners.

But Jennings wasn't done yet. He regained his desire to run. He started running consistently higher mileage. He ran a marathon. He returned to form and finished 2nd to Bernard Lagat in the 2006 U.S. Championships. Although a long shot, he had his eye on making another Olympic team.

On the eve of the 2008 Olympic Trials, here's what Runner's World blogger Parker Morse had to say about Jennings:

"I've found it difficult to explain to people who weren't following running during the 2000 Trials just what Gabe Jennings represents. It's easy to see the lunacy, the priorities 90 degrees from the American mainstream, the eccentricity (and calling Jennings "eccentric" seems too weak, like calling Tyson Gay "fast" or Khadevis Robinson "talkative")."

Morse goes on to describe Jennings as the most unpredictable of runners, one capable of both ordinary magic (running a sub-4:00 mile) and that "more magic" that produces Olympic Trials victories and other inexplicable feats.

In the semi-finals, it looked like Jennings might have that "more magic" as he won his heat in 3:40. But the magic evaporated in the finals, and he finished dead last in 3:47. That, it would seem, was that.

But last weekend, I came across Jennings name again. It was the indoor mile at the Husky "Last Chance" meet, and the big story was Galen Rupp running under 4:00 for the first time. Indeed, Rupp seems to be in the best shape of his life heading into the NCAA Indoor Championships.

But in third place less than a half second behind Rupp was 30-year-old Gabe Jennings, running what appeared to be a 1M personal best of 3:58.25. It seems Jennings has joined the Oregon Track Club, and isn't done yet... not yet, not while he still can summon up that magic every so often.

  1 Rupp, Galen                  Oregon                 3:57.86A 
  2 Abbott, Austin               Washington             3:58.23A 
  3 Jennings, Gabe               OTC                    3:58.25A 
  4 Acosta, A.J.                 Oregon                 4:00.11P

I was happy to see this result, and sent me off to find out what Jennings has been up to. I ran across his blog - The Yogi Runner - on Flotrack, and here's what I read:

"As the self-proclaimed YOGI RUNNER, I preach the power of RUNNING MEDITATION. Although I have yet to gain immortal physical success with my new method, i.e. Gold Medal, titles and honors; I have gained a sort of ENLIGHTENMENT as defined by the eternal Kant and elaborated by Hegel--meaning immanent penetration into the life blood of my soul and the intricate web of nature."

I'm going to pass that statement along to Loren, and I'm sure he'll join me in saying, "Right on, Gabe...Right on!"