I do not live in the past, but sometimes I find myself reminiscing about the 700-plus races I ran between 1979 and 2016. The competition, the friendships made, the occasional atrocious weather—great, great memories. While I can’t do it anymore due to a lower-back problem, I still recall those happy times.
I had no illusions about being anything other than a slightly above-average central Texas road racer. “Faster than some and slower than others” is how I put it, and that was not false modesty. I was neither ashamed nor overly proud of my running ability. I did my best, and what more can you ask? Eliud Kipchoge, I was not.
Minor injuries prevented me from doing any marathons between 2000 and 2002, and the number of races declined as did my times. Then, for reasons I never quite understood, I had a renascence of sorts. There was a strong showing in the 2003 Capitol 10,000 (which I ran every year from 1982 until my departure for Korea in 2007) and others. So I was encouraged to participate in the Dallas White Rock Marathon that December; Houston Tenneco and Fort Worth Cowtown followed in early 2004. Before those 26.2-milers, however, there was a 5K sponsored by an organization of female Asian-American students at UT.
The background of the present story is as follows. Although I had won a few races, each merited an asterisk. One year the UT Law School put on a three-mile event (known as Race Judicata, a sly inside joke about res judicata, the principle that a cause of action may not be re-litigated once it has been judged on the merits) that started and finished at Eastwoods Park. The field was limited to law students, and I certainly was not in that group. I came across the finish line first and immediately explained the situation. The guy behind me was—fairly—recognized as the winner. The National Abortion Rights Action League held a race near Town Lake in the late 1980s. I was first, but I had not paid my money beforehand, rendering me a “bandit.” So that, too, does not constitute a real win.
Then there were my two victories in the so-called Taco Runs put on by local car dealer Rox Covert. He, some UT faculty members and friends did a 10-mile loop that started and finished at Bellmont Hall, with a dinner party that night at a local Mexican restaurant called La Tapatia. Another limited field, so I had no trouble winning two years in a row. The third year, I was in front but slowed down and let a friend named Jackson take the prize. (I know, what a nice guy!)
None of those, you see, counted as real, true, bonafide victories. For nearly 20 years, I’d had enough second-, third- and fourth-place finishes to know it could happen. But I realized time was running out—no pun intended. I was 41, and if I were ever to win it needed to come soon. It came that morning in the race hosted by Asian-American fems. I had paid my entry fee and was thus an official entrant, with a number pinned to my singlet. Anybody could take part, although only around 200 had chosen to do so. We would start and finish at the 23rd Street circle next to the Alumni Center and across the street from the southwest corner of Memorial Stadium.
Even before the gun went off, I sensed that this was not a strong field. I had done a couple dozen campus races and always enjoyed them—running on San Jacinto Boulevard, West 24th Street, Speedway, Guadalupe (“the Drag”), West 21st Street, Inner Campus Drive and Jester Circle were all quite familiar to me. Given the passage of 18 years, I do not remember everything clearly, but I can tell you that well before mile 1 I was in the lead pack, and the pace was less fairly pedestrian. Moreover, the others were struggling to keep up. By mile 2, I was alone at the front. I knew that turning back and looking was both poor sportsmanship and a sign of weakness, fear that somebody might be gaining on me.
But I did not care. Whenever I went around a corner, I darn sure looked, and I saw a lead that was growing. It soon became clear that I would not be caught. The others were battling for second place, and good luck with that. I pulled into the 23rd Street Circle, crossed the finish line and was congratulated by young women from such countries as Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea and the Philippines. (UT has long had a huge international student population, as documented in my book Coming to Texas.)
My time in that race was probably around 18:30—further proof that it had been a weak field. Not to belabor the point, but if I’m your fastest runner you have a very weak field. I got a medal or trophy and put it on the shelf of my bungalow in Travis Heights. There it remained until I left for Korea. I kept it in a storage unit close to the Austin airport for about five years and then let most of that stuff go.
#running #roadracing #EliudKipchoge #whiterockmarathon #houstontennecomarathon #cowtownmarathon #universityoftexas #capitol10000 #comingtotexas #roxcovert #bellmonthall
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