This piece, written and edited by Glen Hazelwood, is a submission from track parent. He originally submitted work to us in XC, with "Musings of A Rookie XC Dad," and has continued to support the running community through his articles "Top Ten Things to Love About The Armory" and "Top Ten P.O.V. On A Track Team." We encourage you to check them all out.
I work at an old-school, "mom & pop" hardware store in suburban Westchester County, New York. I work with typical suburban hardware guys, and we serve typical suburban hardware store customers. And on Monday mornings in May, the talk in the store is all about the baseball...particularly the NY Yankees. My co-workers break down the previous night's game, and the customers all put their two cents in throughout the day as they pass through. On days where there was no game the night before, the conversation may turn to the ongoing hockey or basketball playoffs, the NFL draft, or on very rare occasions, and begrudgingly at that, the Mets.
So it's hard for a diehard track & field 'lifer' such as myself to engage in any stimulating "water cooler" track talk without getting funny, non-comprehending looks from all sides...even more so when all I want to talk about is something that happened, which from my semi-obscure perspective was as big as any playoff game or draft pick or game winning walk-off homer. Quite simply...they just don't get it.
Which is why I'm really, really glad that I have you folks to talk to.
On Friday, May 8th 2015, at the Glenn D. Loucks Memorial Games in White Plains, NY, I was fortunate enough to witness what may have been the greatest high school 3200m race ever. I hope that someone with better resources and more time than me crunches the numbers and substantiates that this was, in fact, the fastest one. But for the sake of this article, suffice it to say that if it wasn't the best race of all time, it was right up there.
Looking at the line-up in the days leading up to the race, you had every reason to believe that this would be a great one. All the right players were in it and the facility is outstanding. The previous year's race put four runners under 9:00, and success tends to breed further success, so I'm certain that these young men came here knowing the potential for some incredibly fast times was there. But given all that, I don't think even the most optimistic trackie could've predicted what would ultimately transpire on the White Plains oval on this night.
I'm not going to attempt to fully recreate the race in this article, because that won't work. It's a highly over used cliché, but there are some things where you just genuinely “had to be there", and this was one of those. There's no way that my words could possibly convey the intensity of this race, or just the sheer joy of watching these superb young athletes take their sport very near to the limits of which it can be done. The video on Milesplit comes a lot closer to capturing it than I could here, and even if you take a one month subscription to the site just to watch this race, please trust me that it will be completely worth it and would be money well spent.
What I will say about this race is….they went fast. Really, really fast. Faster than any athlete, coach, official or fan had any reason to believe they could. I watched the race from the fence surrounding the track about 5 meters short of the finish line. I clicked my watch at the gun and these guys were just gone. They came through the first quarter at 62 seconds, which prompted me to literally do a double-take between my watch and the race clock to see if I'd blown the start. I didn't.
Then they settled down into an incredible set of 66-67 second quarters, coming through the mile at 4:22. I said to myself, “Man, there's just nobody in this race with a shred of common sense. There's no way they're keeping this up the whole way!"
I was wrong.
They kept on going relentlessly at this pace…no one backing down, no one giving a moments respite to their competitors. Just pushing and pushing and pushing toward the finish. Another 67…followed by another one…followed by a 66 and closing with a final lap of 59, with Mike Brannigan taking the lead from Alex Ostberg with about 200m to go and finishing out the win.
I want to point out one specific thing about this final lap. A 59 second bell lap at the end of two miles at this speed doesn't come from a kick at 200 to go. That kind of close is born back at the bell, with everyone near the front and still “in it" pulling out everything they've got and taking their best shot at grabbing the win at the end. These were some of the nation's finest high school distance runners, absolutely flying around this track with all guns blazing on that final 400m…and the way Mikey Brannigan muscled his way past Ostberg and put space between himself and the rest of this elite field, at the speed they were all going, was one of the most impressive athletic performances that I have ever witnessed in my life. It was absolutely stunning.
I clicked Branningan coming through the finish at 8:42, spitting out the almost mandatory “Holy ####..." that human nature dictates that I say in situations such as these.
Then I clicked Ostberg at 8:43!
Then I clicked Moskowitz at 8:44!!
And over the 18 seconds between Branningan crossing the line, and my watch clicking David Principe Jr. coming in at 9:00, I escalated from that softly muttered epithet to literally laughing out loud and screaming at the top of my lungs at the same time over what I just saw. This was a group of the best high school runners you could ask for, executing their talents at an unheard of level, and it was simply beautiful to watch. I texted Kyle immediately…. "3200m. W…O…W!!!"
After the race, I headed down by the staging box to catch up with my son who had run in the first heat. I found him with a bunch of the guys who'd just come off the track, and I mostly just stood back and watched and listened to them. They were all still out of breath and sweating, and I'm sure the full impact of what they'd just done hadn't really set in all the way yet. But they knew. The looks on their faces were a unique blend of disbelief and accomplishment, and the smiles couldn't be beaten off of them with a baseball bat. And the coolest part was that Ostberg's smile was just as big as Branningan's, and Moskowitz's was as big as Ostberg's, and so on and so on down the line. If you want to get a little taste of this, watch the video when Jeremy Spiezio crosses the finish line as possibly the happiest 4th place finisher in Loucks Games history. It just didn't seem like it mattered that much who won the race to this exclusive little club. There was a thoroughly tangible air of respect and admiration for each other over what they'd all just done together, and that was the best part of the whole evening for me.
This race was a textbook example of synergy. No single runner made it happen on his own. They all did it together, and I genuinely believe that if any of the top 6-8 guys in the race weren't there, it may not have gone the way it did. They fed off of one another and pushed each other to find their best, and in doing so they earned the respect of everyone in attendance, and even more importantly, their peers.
In 1975, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier had the last of their three fights. It was promoted as the “Thrilla in Manila", and many say that it was the greatest boxing match of all time. In a later interview about this fight, sportswriter Jerry Izenberg said, “What it came down to in Manila wasn't the heavyweight championship of the world. They were fighting for the championship of each other."
That's what this race was like.
At the end of the Friday night session, I tracked down my longtime friend and one of my favorite people in all of high school track and field, Loucks Games meet director Fred Singleton. We exchanged our usual pleasantries and spoke briefly about the race. As we parted, I made a comment along the lines of “…if this keeps up, they're gonna start calling this 'Arcadia East'!"
Fred replied, “Or maybe they'll call them 'Loucks West'!"
We both laughed, but the sentiment is not outside the realm of possibility. I proposed earlier that success tends to breed further success, and the way it seemed that last year's success played into this years, I can imagine the Loucks Games 3200m becoming that kind of race. It would be hard for top distance guys to look at this year's results and not want to be a part of the next one. The White Plains track is excellent and the meet itself is superbly run. The Loucks Games would be a great stage for a “marquee race", and I hope it develops into exactly that.
I want to close this by thanking everyone who ran in this race. It was an absolute privilege to watch it. It doesn't matter where you finished or what your time was…you all took a win on Friday night. You were a part of a race that people will be talking about for years, and that you yourself will never forget. And, you have a great story to tell your kids when they start lacing up their first pair of trainers.
Thank you, gentlemen.
