Worst Races #8

St. Barnabas 5k, 2001- I spent the 2001 summer trying to break 16 for 5k, in hopes of walking on at Miami. This was one of my many, many failures, and perhaps my most painful. I paced myself well at the beginning, running well behind Mike Diano, and coming through the mile at 5:10. Then, it just got worse. I slowed down when I felt my strength totally sapping, and twice I stopped and stood there, unable to see straight. People passed me left and right, and I struggled in and saw my dad, who had come to see me run. It was emotionally throttling for me to know he saw such a dramatic collapse. This wasn't a race where I took it out too hard and burned out- My approach was reasonable! I was prudent! I was a failure.

I finished 13th, in 17:32. I had worse races that year, but after I acknowledged that I was struggling with anxiety problems and lowered my athletic expectations. Had I recognized my anxiety issues that summer, I would have taken a full semester away from college and skipped the Miami fiasco, or gone right to Richmond instead.

Worst Races #9

Old Dominion Athletic Conference Championships 2000-If I was a horse, they would have shot me after this one. I ran six races my freshman year because the Hampden-Sydney team only had five runners, and if I sat out we wouldn't score as a team. Coming from a heavily team-oriented background at Mt. Lebanon, I was ready to push through some discomfort and fatigue to give our team a chance in any race, but I struggle to even think of one team we beat that year. Maybe Southern Virgina? Averett? I'm pretty sure Ferrum beat us. For the conference championships, we returned to the Washington & Lee, a beautiful loops in the woods along the Maury River, where I had run 29:04 in my first race. Surely I could duplicate that, it was my first collegiate race and a difficult course. Wrong. I finished 39th in 31:46-- my worst time all season. I can't remember if I started hard, trying to actually contend with the Lynchburg and Roanoke runners (I can't believe they were once the standard to whom I looked when hoping to be fast) or if I tried to sit back and conserve my energy for later in the race. I barely remember any of the race, other than heading down onto the trail from the soccer field.
I just felt really bad that my mom had driven all the way from Pittsburgh to watch me fail so miserably. To make matters worse, we didn't even field a full team, because our second runner sprained his ankle and had to drop out, so we didn't even beat Emory and Henry. It was the end of a nightmarish season, but at least all the running I would do would be free of Bubba, whose bio at Sewanee conspicuously omits his disastrous tenure as head cross country coach at Hampden-Sydney... For a while I thought about trying to run as an individual at the southeastern regional meet, but I thought it was better to just get out of there. None of the team members came back- I transferred, Matt, Dan and Kennon graduated, I don't know what happened to Jo and Henrick, who was injured for all but two races, played rugby instead. Just as well, I suppose. There was nothing to build on there except frustration and misery.

Worst Races #10

Steelers 5k, 2007- I know it's odd to put a 15:36 race as my 10th worst, but hear me out.

I came into the race on a 12-race winning streak, I had broken 15 minutes and a lot of my competitors. I broke 16 minutes on the Run for Roch course with a few hours' sleep. For the Steelers race -- a flat course on the North Side with no turnarounds, good competition, cool weather and ample preparation -- I should have dominated and PRed easily.

Instead, I blew it.
I started out in a dominant position. Ryan Erdly said I had a commanding lead during the first mile. How long that first mile lasted was up for debate, however. A course volunteer said five minutes as I passed, 10 seconds slower than my goal pace for the first two miles, but also not where I was expecting the mile mark. I immediately surged and kicked up my pace significantly, but started to slow right before the two mile mark, which I passed in 9:28. I didn't think I was capable of running 4:28 in the middle of a race, so I tend to think the first mile was a little long, which it indeed was, based on measurement with Dan Holland's wheel and the subsequent first mile timer placement in other years.
My struggles increased dramatically as I tied up when I covered the first half of the third mile, and some fellow in spandex shorts passed me and I didn't fight him, I just kept grabbing for some feeling of comfort by running as slowly as I could. On my way back to Heinz Field, 47-or-so-year-old Paul Zimmerman caught me. After June's Greenfield Glide, he told Mark Schwartz that he would have caught me, given another half mile, which was hogwash because I put 18 seconds on him in the last mile. I reeled him back in with the encouragement of Matt Meurer and Dave Hackworth and managed to gap him by three seconds. I won tickets to a game, but lost my true fighting instinct. Since then, I haven't felt in control of a race- even races where I have had minute-plus leads. The race broke my confidence, and so far two years later I haven't repaired it. The next week, I actually ran slower at IKEA. I capitulated to several runners in the Great Race and surrendered to a high schooler at the Pittsylvania 6k. The Philadelphia Marathon's 8k, the centerpiece of my fall racing, was a disaster, and I feel like I owe much of it to my poor racing at the Steelers race on a course I should have known well enough to be confident about the pacing.

The final results:
1.Josiah Lunenberger 15:17
2.Charlie Ban 15:36
3.Paul Zimmerman 15:39