Looking back, December long gone by...

December 1982 – 30 years ago

I started my freshman year of Indoor track at U-Lowell with a quad-meet at Tufts University.  Tufts was sort of our home track as we did all of our workouts there.  It was an interesting track back then with half of the track in a “tunnel”.  I ran the two mile and ran “comfortably” to a 9:18.8 which at the time was my second fastest indoor two mile.  We ended up taking the meet topping Tufts by a mere 1.5 points.  I ran a 63 last 400 to out leg my teammates.  A week later I ran the mile at a dual meet in Lewiston Maine.  Talk about a long way to go for 4+ minutes of racing.  I ended up finishing 2^nd in 4:21.8 which was a 7 second PR for me.  We easily won the meet 99 to 39.

December 1987 – 25 years ago

I only raced once during December of 1987 at the classic Mill City Relays.  I ran the 9.6 mile leg in 48:05 and caught a few splits along the way (4:50/4:50/5:00).  I called the race a “very long and very cold run”.

December 1992 – 20 years ago

I raced twice during this month with the main goal being the Rocket City Marathon.  I started off the month running for “Mike Beeman’s Total Sports” team at the Mill City Relays.  Teammates included Scott Spence, Steve Peterson, Artie Demers, and the great Mike Beeman.  We really stirred things up by having a team of “all-stars”.  Back then the rules were pretty tight but we got into the race as all of us were/are lifetime members of the Winners Circle Running Club.  I guess the big controversy was that we were decked out in “Total Sports” singlets.  Anyway, we had fun which is what the relay is all about.  I ran the 4.6 mile leg in 22:09 (4:48 pace!).  I was in my “taper” phase for the marathon.

Six days later I was down in Huntsville taking on a field of 874 runners on a mid-30 degree day with lots of wind.  The course had an incredible 52 turns but was reasonably flat so I was hoping for a quick time.  I stayed in a good sized chase pack from 2 miles through 10 miles and moved into the lead after 21 miles and went on for my first marathon victory in 2:20:51 (splits 1:09:45/1:11:06).