Season's Greetings

The Reasonably Speedy Holiday Wishlist

For those of you keeping score at home, it took approximately three weeks of legitimate cold before I started complaining again. Maybe summer’s not that bad after all? And for those of you farther North, infuriated by hearing me complain about it being 30 degrees in the morning as “real cold,” take solice in knowing that summer down here is, in fact, that bad. Ya don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, etc, etc.

As the holidays draw near, indoor track has undertaken a sort of 3-week dormancy until the new year. There was, as far as I can tell, only one club-attended meet last weekend, but other than that I’m not expecting to see to much in the track department until January. Delaware made an appearance at the Franklin & Marshall Diplomat Open, throwing down solid performances from 60m up. Perhaps most noteworthy is sophomore Michael Anderson’s 2:00.74 800m performance. Beyond those results, however, my well has temporarily run dry.

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So! Rather than bloating your inbox with wild speculation or rote recapping, I’d rather get into the holiday spirit with a quick wish list for 2023. What follows, though definitely not in its entirety, is my wish list for club running in 2023:

A Legitimate Postseason

NIRCA Outdoor Nats is almost always very early in relation to how the rest of the country does outdoor track. And, while the early/mid-April National meet is undoubtedly good for a lot of people’s exam schedules, it’s not ideal from a training perspective. Getting into tip-top shape and peaking at the right time is plenty hard as it is, but rushing to get it done by early April (when the rest of the running world gets until May or June) makes it that much trickier. As the system exists now, most of club running’s speediest athletes wind up running their fastest times a month or two after nationals.

Again, I’m not advocating for a change in NIRCA’s schedule. But, I think it’d be awfully neat for those of us scattered across the US to look into putting on our own little track post-season. The meets don’t have to stop after Nats! Think of it like our own little bootleg Diamond League. Just like how the really Diamond League meets happen after national champs, world champs, and NCAAs, our Cubic Zirconia League would function the same way. Maybe we enlist some D1-buddy pacers and see just how fast these club wheels can really spin. Maybe we have a point system for who beats who and who gets crowned post-season champs. Crazy relays! Jean miles! The possibilities are endless! Speaking of which…

A Club 10,000m Championship

That’s right. I wanna see you suffer.

While it makes perfect sense that NIRCA doesn’t include the 10,000m in their outdoor programs (even if we did it all in one dangerously-massive heat, it would likely take up to an hour to finish the event). HOWEVER — that shouldn’t stop us from holding our own event to determine a national champ in track’s most lovecraftian event. 25 laps, who’s with me?

If I had the money, the resources, and the track availability to put this on, I would run it thusly:

1. One “championship” heat for each gender. A relatively small field with the PRs to back up their shot at the throne. No pacers, pure racing.

2. Several paced PR-chaser heats. See how many PBs we can eke out of one meet. Maybe offer a prize for whoever knocks the most time off their previous PR.

3. A 10x 1000m relay race. Who wouldn’t want to watch that?

More Zaney Racing

One of the beautiful things about this league is that we have the opportunity to do some truly, truly silly things on the track, and it’s my sincere wish that we see a lot more of that in 2023. Whether the nuttiness is built into the race itself (see: my idea for a Shamrock Shake mile¹) or it manifests in club runners going rogue (see: JMU using an inflatable zebra as a 4x100m baton, the infamous juggling 2-miler, etc), we need to put the "stupid" back in "stupid fast!"

A Club Beer Mile Championship

Should speak for itself. Would have to be unofficial, of course, and likely somewhat covert. If somebody makes this happen, however… drop me a line.

1. I’ve been trying to get this happening for years now. The concept: It’s St. Patty’s Day. Every contestant has one Shamrock Shake split evenly into four cups. The event is governed by beer mile rules. Chaos and green barfs ensue.