One thing athletes across all sports have in common is wanting success. There are obvious ways to measure this, such as winning a championship or an MVP award. There are also not-so-obvious ways. In Major League Baseball, every team wants to win the World Series but it’s not a reasonable expectation for most of them. ESPN put out an interesting list a couple of seasons ago identifying an achievable goal for every team and it included many outcomes including winning the World Series win, making the playoffs, or just having a winning record, among others.
For my race team, the Dry Creek Striders, of course we would enjoy sweeping a podium at a major marathon but that’s not reasonable. However, a couple of us did a race in the spring of 2022 and after it was over, we realized that had we all shown up, we would have swept the top three spots. In that moment, the idea of the team sweeping the podium in a race became a goal.
Of course, to create a sweep the top three finishers for the team have to be faster than the rest of the field. Over the following months, it didn’t happen for different reasons. There was at least one race where we could have swept but only two of us showed up, and a few races where a couple of other fast people thwarted our attempt.
We did a race this past Saturday, the Weld your Mettle 7K, where we hoped it might finally happen. As the race began, our two fastest runners, Collin Knaub and D.J. Hummel, took the lead. A third runner pushed them for a short bit but quickly fell back and it seemed apparent that they would hold the top two spots. However, the third-place person and one other runner were between them and me and the sweep was immediately in doubt.
I had projected a 28:00 time for the 7K, or 6:26 per mile. I knew the course was slightly downhill on the way out and thus slightly uphill on the way back. Not knowing the course and the 7K being an unfamiliar distance (I had never run it before; the closest for me was a 7.77K last year) I was determined to stick to my pace so as not to flame out early or have too much left. While I didn’t enjoy hanging back in fifth, I was patient and passed fourth place at around the half-mile point and then third place a little after the mile mark. I was then on my own.
At the turnaround, Collin and D.J. held a solid command of first and second so barring a complete meltdown, they would hold those spots. When I turned around, I made a note of how far behind me the next runner was. This was where I got concerned again. I did have thirty seconds on them but they were not one of the two that I had passed earlier. The now-fourth-place runner had worked his way up in the pack and I was wondering just how much fuel he had left. I increased my speed a little to immediately create a bigger gap, then settled back in to my planned pace.
At that pace, 30 seconds is a little over 120 meters and I kept two things in mind to keep from shifting into panic mode. The person behind me would have to run thirty seconds faster than me in order to catch me. Also, as I was starting to feel the effects of the net uphill, I kept in mind that they were also having to deal with the same elevation gain.
The result? I ended up crossing the line in 27:35 in third place and we finally got the sweep we wanted. We’ll enjoy it because like any success in athletics, you don’t know when or even if you’ll get the same result again.
Photo credits: Rob Knaub
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