50 Years of Running: Road Trippin’

Posted on December 18, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

On the 17th of September, 1979, I climbed into the beatup Chevy Monza that Luther College assigned me for road trips and drove the 5+ hours to the Chicago market for the first college fair of the fall season.

For those unfamiliar with the college admissions process in the good old days, it was basically a semi-controlled crapshoot in which college recruiters attempted to make contact with 18-year-old kids trying to make college decisions in their last year of high school. We’d meet a share of junior-year students as well, and getting them to apply was basically seed stock for the coming years. But the money game was landing commitments from seniors. First, you tried to meet a student and their parents. Then get a college visit, followed by an application, and finally, if you did your job well enough, a full-on commitment to attend Luther indicated by a deposit toward their education.

My assigned quota was to recruit 70 students from Chicago and the State of Illinois. After scheduling high school visitation days and college fairs with counselors and organizers, I’d sent out postcards to prospective students in hopes of meeting them during in-school visits. From there, it was a matter of making some sort of connection with the kids, finding out what they might like to student, or learning other reasons why they were interested in Luther, including the great music or athletic programs.

We carried applications to hand out and a binder with photos of the Luther campus. Sometimes, we even had a slide projector and presentation tool to show the same basic images. Before the Internet, there was no website or other material to share with students. Basically, the information that today exists on a website was all kept in your head.

The first time I drove to the Chicago market in that beatup Chevy, the engine quit when I reached Park Ridge. I had to rely on the help of a loyal alumnus to help me get the car to the shop for a repair and still make it to that night’s college fair.

I wrote, “Did OK the first day. Little depressions set in. Hard to stay UP. Run was strained attempt at normalcy. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this. I miss her company. Thrushes at Illinois beach.”

I’d driven 270 miles to start the week in Zion and worked my way down the North Shore stopping at high schools on the way to Park Ridge. To my stunned disappointment, I learned that some of the scheduled schools were basically shut down due to Jewish holidays. Why hadn’t the guidance counselors at those schools warned me? I was angry about the wasted opportunities to meet some really good prospects. In any case, I made it through that first week and eagerly drove the 256 miles back to the Luther campus Friday afternoon. Back in town, I went for a three-mile run with my former teammates Elly and Moon, then collapsed into bed.

The next day, I gathered up some cash and bought my girlfriend that cat-eye stone pre-engagement ring she’d picked out at a local jeweler. But I was so busy working in the admissions office that Saturday that I held off a week for a better time to give it to her.

On Sunday night, I turned around and drove back to the western suburbs of Chicago. The autumn sunset faded fast behind me as I crossed Wisconsin through Fennimore to Dodgeville and Madison, where I typically stopped at the McDonalds on Route 18 before swinging around the Beltline and heading south on 1-90 to Chicago.

When I returned the following weekend, I gave the ring to my girlfriend and wrote, “Felt good about it.”

I worked all day in the Admissions office, as was the requirement every other week. That’s how it went throughout the fall, including long downstate trips to far-flung places like Danville and Decatur, Springfield and Lincoln, Illinois, where I was invited to dinner with a warm and welcoming family whose son would later commit to Luther after they flew up by small plane to the Decorah airport. After their campus visit and the tour I gave them, I drove them to the airport where the kid’s father pressed a twenty-dollar bill into my hand during our goodbyes, and told me “Thanks, you’re doing a good job.”

I thought so. The student applications were starting to come in, and kids were paying deposit fees as well. But my boss still did not seem to trust me. That made life on the road a bit tougher, as it fed an already unhealthy level of self-doubt and the inevitable loneliness of staying in hotels and motels on the outskirts of dark little towns or the bustling suburbs of Chicago. One depressing episode found me staying at a Motel 6 next to a trainyard where long lines of coal and freight rattled loud and angrily from end to end as the engines moved them into position for the next day’s journey. I couldn’t sleep that night for the terminal racket, and I left that Motel cursing at the place. I drove the three hours back to the Chicago market and finished up a Friday of high school visits before piling back into the car to drive the 5+ hours back up to Luther.

Driving range

Typically, the weekly driving mileage ranged between 1000 and 1500 miles. That was necessary to reach all the high schools and college fairs I could manage between September and the end of November. On several trips, I joined Luther professors and administrators for special projects including science student recruitment fairs and alumni fundraisers as well.

By October 22, I was feeling the mental strain of all that traveling, and wrote, “Cut out on a college fair. The work on the weekend fucked my attitude up. This Admissions job comes and goes. I hope I can make tomorrow go better on the South Side.”

Recruiting inner-city students was one of the more interesting aspects of the job. I had little knowledge about the location of Chicago high schools, and relied on a giant city map to find my way around. I was told by my bosses to wait for colder weather to visit the city schools. “There’s less crime when it’s cold out,” they insisted. I’d wear my three-piece suits to visit with inner-city students. Most would show up prepared with their grades and ACT scores in hand.

Lessons learned

On some trips, I’d be accompanied by my former Luther track coach Aubrey Taylor. One day we were scheduled to do some home visits with a couple football prospects, and as we pulled up in front of the Robert Taylor homes on the south side of Chicago, Aubrey instructed me, “You stay here in the car. It’s not safe for you to come up in there.”

He met with the kids and we drove to the far southern suburbs and met with the family of a brilliant young woman whose family was eager for her to gain admission to Luther. The meeting in their living room was both informative and cordial. I was excited to meet the family and as we walked out with the front door closing behind us, I was set to pause with Aubrey on the sidewalk when he shot a glance my way and said, “Keep on walking.”

I trusted Aubrey on many levels, so I followed him out the front walk and back to our car. We sat down inside and he turned to me with an earnest look and said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. But don’t stop and talk like that in front of the family. It sends a bad message… like you’re talking behind their back.”

We attended a daytime college fair at one of the technical high schools the next day. The culinary program served lunch for us. I sat chatting with a group of students and faculty, and absentmindedly starting cutting one of my baked potatoes in two when half of it shot up from the lip of the plate and landed !plop! down the front of my vest. Everyone saw it, but no one laughed. They were too polite. But I did. “Okay, I’m an idiot,” I chuckled. Only then did people smile and nod in sympathy. The potatoes were a bit undercooked. Otherwise, the meal was delicious.

Recruiting minority students was actually one of my favorite parts of the job. Luther had around one-hundred black students on campus out of a student body at that time of about 2400. I’d roomed many times with black teammates in track, and saw the social dynamics at work in other ways. Many of the black students dined together at the far end of the Union cafeteria. That was never a sign of malice, but a sign of commonality. The Black Student Union was formed to give students support on campus.

Lifelong learning

I’d grown up south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a racially rich city. At the mere age of five or six years old, I got to be a batboy with my oldest brother’s team. Sometimes I’d go up on the athletic fields above the baseball stadium and run around with groups of other kids. A set of twins became my favorite playmates. Their sense of humor and playful intellect even at the age of three or four years old made me want to hang out with them. But one night I accidentally ran smack into one of the brothers with my boney elbow. He ran home crying. I didn’t see the twins for several weeks. But when they finally showed up again, one of the twins still had a black eye, and they told me, “Our momma said we can’t play with you, because you hurt us.”

Surely their mother thought the boy’s black eye was no accident. What I learned from that incident was that people can get the wrong impression even when you’re trying to do the right thing. I also learned that black children perhaps live in a different world than me. That may seem like a simplified civil rights lesson, but it stuck with me all my life.

That’s why I listened so closely to Aubrey Taylor during our recruiting trips. I also trusted the other Luther coaches and faculty, because I’d seen their commitment to equality in education firsthand. It wasn’t easy for some black kids from the city to attend a small liberal arts college out in farm country. The same held true for Asian people and for that matter, gay students in the 1970s. I’d made a few gay friends through my girlfriend that senior year in college. Getting to know them changed everything about my perception of what it meant to be gay.

My Life As An Art Major

One of my pencil drawings of runner Frank Shorter from the mid-1970s.

Part of my empathy stemmed from the fact that I had my own issues with self-perception relative to my artistic brain and how it did or didn’t mesh with the world. A few years after college, I wrote an article titled “My Life As an Art Major: Or why we qualify for the Americans With Disabilities Act.” I guess I’ve always empathized with people over their struggles. Whether I did so perfectly or not, I cannot say. But the key point in life from my perspective was trying to understand others. To me, that was what working in college admissions was all about. Making those connections. Helping people find their path.

I had so many alternative aspects of character within me, from the birdwatching to the art, my writing and a weird sense of humor, that there were times when I wondered if I just a hopeless oddball compared to other people that seemed to have a central purpose and a plan in life. It didn’t help that during the 1970s, runners were considered oddballs as well. But I kept on.

Long commutes

Back and forth I went from Decorah to Illinois in the long commute from the college to my territory. I planned extended trips and roamed all over the state some weeks. Then I’d take a week and concentrate on the “hot spots” for students from the Chicago area. In all, I’d made that 500-mile round trip drive from Luther to Chicago and back nine times by the middle of October. That rattletrap Chevy Monza was a terror to drive. One day, the stick knob just popped off in my hand. The inside core was a spiral of solid porcelain, and the grooves just wore out. There I was, rolling up I-90 from Janesville toward Madison with the stick knob in my hand and a bundle of wires and parts justting out from the stick shift lever. I rolled the car to the side of the road and eased the stick knob back onto the shifter, and blessedly, it worked.

But a week later, real calamity struck on October 26. I’d stopped on my way back from Chicago to pick up my girlfriend after she visited her parents that week in the Northwest suburbs. I was looking forward to all that time in the car with her, but her mother was less sanguine, repeatedly reminding me to drive carefully.

We were chatting merrily and catching up on things when I pulled to a stoplight in Delavan, Wisconsin, and waited for the light to change. When it turned green, the car ahead of us just sat there for several seconds. I was about to honk the horn when the car finally started to move. I shoved the stick knob into gear, stomped on the clutch and lurched the car forward with that half-assed stick knob still doing its job. They couldn’t get a replacement for it quick enough for my next trip. So I’d made the best of it.

I was focused on shifting the gears while looking down at the stick knob when the car ahead of us slammed on the brakes for some reason. I was going fast enough that the hood of that Chevy Monza piled right under the rear fender of the Ford Granada.

The impact slammed my girlfrien’ds face into the dashboard. When she sat back, blood streamed out her nose. I started cursing and reached over to hold her in my arms.

The police soon arrived and she got treatment for her banged-up nose. I called the college long-distance to let them know about the accident. For some reason that I can’t recall, the car had to be hauled all the way over to Beloit for repairs.

Let’s spend the night together

She and I stayed that night in Beloit, then called her parents in the morning. They were incensed upon hearing that we’d spent a night in the hotel together. I don’t know what they thought we were up to all that time dating each other, but it was certainly not the first time that we’d spent the night together––including several hotels along the way. Her folks were angry, and demanded to come pick her up, but I’d already rented a car, so we told them we were okay, and drove the rest of the way to Luther. We made an ice pack for her nose, and at that point, finally found some humor in the whole scene. By the next day, things were basically back to normal and we went out for a bird walk together in Decorah. That walk felt good because my running mileage thanks to all the traveling had dwindled to less than 20 miles a week.

By that point, I really couldn’t afford to care about how much running I did. But during that last week of scheduled high school visits, I dropped in at Carl Sandburg HS and asked the cross country coach if I could run with the team that day. The varsity had already left the building for their run, so I joined a group of sophomores and freshman. Seven inches of snow had fallen, and we wound up running ten miles on the trails of a local forest preserve. By the end of the run, our feet were caked with snow and I was so exhausted I could barely managed to get changed back at the hotel and make it to the college fair that night at Sandburg. But I did go, because despite what my boss thought of me, I was dedicated to hitting my quota of 70 students that year. I may not have been a conventional admissions counselor in some ways, but I took pride in the relationship building aspect of my work. I could feel that I was making good connections with students. Plus, the applications were coming in, and the deposits too.

Despite all the adversity I’d been facing with the admissions and the lack of running and the back and forth of our relationship, I still maintained a positive attitude the best I could.

But I’ve always been an analytical person when it comes to the sense of right and wrong, and the best way to do things. During all those miles spent driving around Chicago and the state of Illinois, I kept thinking, “There has to be a better way to do this.” At that time, no one could imagine the miracle of the Internet, the convenience of email or the connections made possible through remote video conferencing. Back in 1979. That all seemed like Dick Tracy stuff. I still had the sense that the admissions process was one fucked up mess.

As I later learned, I was not alone in that perspective. But we’ll get to that.

All I was trying to do was survive in the face of the circumstances I was given. That included trying to keep on running and holding together the relationship I treasured with my girlfriend. The lyrics to the 1977 song Running On Empty by Jackson Browne seemed to fit my life precisely, with just a tweak of one number:

Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive
Trying not to confuse it, with what you do to survive
In ’79, I was 21 and I called the road my own
I don’t know when that road turned into the road I’m on

Running on (running on empty)
Running on (running blind)
Running on (running into the sun)
But I’m running behind

Posted in adhd, anxiety, Christopher Cudworth, college, competition, mental health, running, sex | Tagged admissions counselor, admissions quotas, black colleges, black student union, chevy monza, city of chicago, college admissions, college enrollment, college recruiting, Luther College, mental strain, minority students, race relationships, road trippin, urban students | Leave a comment

50 Years of Running: What a fool believes

Posted on December 16, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

Somehow I managed to squeeze in a race back home in Illinois amid all the new obligations with the admissions job. The race raised funds for my high school cross country program, and I ran a solid 25:40 five-mile after going through the three-mile mark in 15:13. Then I drove back up to in the Chevy Monza the college had given me, and met my girlfriend before she headed out for the same RA Retreat in which I’d met her a year before. Life seemed to be swirling all around us.

I dove back into the job, but was still unaccustomed to the grind of a daily routine. “I can barely keep track of what day it is,” I wrote in my journal. “The job threatens. My head aches. But there are rewards. Anticipation. Motivation. I’ve got to justify my existence to myself. Clearly and openly. God help me know myself.”

I was still running and trying to think it all through. “As I look through these yearbooks (journals) and at last year’s workouts, it’s easy to see that life is changing. And so it does. I have enjoyed the difficult changes and strength of mind that I feel. Yet people watch you change and they enjoy any pain they can envision and impose on you. They want you to suffer along with them, no matter how good you feel about yourself. Well hell with them. Be sure of yourself. I will. These times are times to be looked back upon, and how soon. Youth is the experience that that one is made up of, and experiences keep one young. What a fool believes. I am not trying to reason away the problems and sorrow. No way. I’ve grown too much from pain. Just give me; let me, know me, as a man who cares what he’s all about.”

What was the source of all the pain I was talking about? Most of it (but not all) was the sense of being caught between two worlds. The world I longed to create… and the one that was actually taking place. Dealing with the office atmosphere with all its subtle quirks and political expectations was not to my liking. I generally liked and appreciated most of the people on the admissions team and the support staff too. But there was an odd sensation, communicated in sometimes not-so-subtle ways–– that my relationship with my girlfriend was somehow now out-of-bounds. “College staff cannot date students,” I was told at one point.

What was I supposed to do about that? She and I had been dating more than a year. It wasn’t like I picked her up at some campus bar over the weekend. Other college couples had met on campus. I didn’t get the difference, and didn’t dare to ask.

That feeling was made worse by the fact that I didn’t genuinely understand where she and I were headed. On Sept 6, just over a month into the new job, I wrote, “(She) and I have talked unendingly about our affinities for each other. And I don’t care what she says from now on, should I decide to call it nil on the engagement…”

Yes. She was pressuring me to get engaged. Back at home in July, I’d even gotten some pressure from my mother to honor that idea if it came up. I wrote, “It’s fair to her to let on how I feel about her and respect her. I understand the need for a promise now after a talk with mom.”

So my mind was swirling about all of that. Yet my feelings were real. “I’ve loved her with all my heart, every cent, all my talents and with my mind. I still love her. She’s very intelligent but possessive. It is not as if I have not beckoned her to love me. I am a sorry sort at times and she has helped me immensely. Without her I might have been lost at times. But it’s still me inside her love, and I have to do the going for it. I don’t know how to tell her I care for and about her. This need not be the forever end. Am I a quitter? I think not. I’m just going to find my way and be ready for next time around.”

On September 7th it all came to a head: “(She) told me to get lost today. I don’t plan on it. She has treated me so fine. I feel no bitterness, but remorse at my not having the foresight to manage things earlier. Maybe we will hit it off again sometime, when some of hers and mine attitudes have changed. It is my guess she will have nothing serious to do with men for a while. I will probably not be capable of meeting anyone else either. I won’t lie. She hurt me last night, smiling and laughing and looking so fine.”

After our big row, we wound up at the same bar that night, where I almost died from the tension of seeing her. Whatever the case, we made up that week and I noted on September 13, “I begin traveling next week. What a change that will be. I must get totally prepared for each trip. Maybe’s can’t be counted on. Anyway, do your best.”

I ran six miles with the college cross country team that week, sneaking out of work a bit early to catch them for a run. My week totaled 25 miles. Just hanging on. Sensing even more change in the coming days, I wrote, “That Mistress of Mine” probably means more to me than ever before.” That was a reference to a song hiding on the back end of a Little River Band album. The music was mesmerizing, and the lyrics compelling:

She turns like the tide and takes me where I’ve never been
There’s peace at her side, she’s a lady and a gypsy queen
I’m caught by her spell, sometimes I wish I’d never seen
That mistress of mine, that mistress of mine

But the bigger theme playing in my head was the song What a Fool Believes, a major hit by the Doobie Brothers that year:

He came from somewhere back in her long ago
The sentimental fool don’t see
Trying hard to recreate what had yet to be created
Once in her life, she musters a smile for his nostalgic tale
Never coming near what he wanted to say
Only to realize it never really was

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
He’s watching her go

But a fool believes he sees
The wise man has the power to reason away

What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him

Somewhere back in her long ago
Where he can still believe there’s a place in her life
Someday, somewhere, she will return

On September 16th I wrote: “I go on the road tomorrow. God, let me do well!”

Posted in fear, foregiveness, love, mental health, race pace, running | Tagged doobie brothers, engagement, falling in love, falling out of love, getting engaged, little river band, Luther College, relationships, that mistress ofmine, the daily grind, what a fool believes | Leave a comment

50 Years of Running: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Posted on December 15, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

With nearly two months to spend before starting the Luther admissions job, I hung out at home musing about the future and doing a bit of maintenance running. By early July, I was restless and jumped into a 15K stretching from Crystal Lake to McHenry. “Felt smooth and strong,” I wrote in the journal. “51:51.”

I wasn’t doing big mileage that summer with the biggest week at 56 miles. But two weeks later, I raced against the Luther boys at Nordic Fest in Decorah, taking 4th on the hilly Elvelopet course in 50:30. I’d just turned 22 years old. Then I took a trip to Grinnell, Iowa with my girlfriend, and returned to Decorah for the first day of work as an admissions counselor.

The changes were coming thick and fast by that point. “Looked at the apartment,” I wrote. “It’s nice enough. I think I should see if Elly will split the rent and live with me. (She) was of great help to me. She buffered me from all my blundering with other people. I bought two suits, two shirts, and a short-sleeve shirt. I put $500 in my savings account, $500 in my checking. I still have to buy more clothes, and have another $100 in my wallet. $30 more coming from my painting for Kim Haugen. They liked it, I guess. Maybe I should sell a few more at Nordic Fest.”

My running mileage went up and down with all the commitments coming at me. I was learning the hard way that the sport I’d done to anchor to my existence the previous eight years often took a back seat to the realities of life.

August 3 “Third day of work. Learning this job takes concentration, which I have, but I’ll have to fight the yawns! The people in the office are all very human and seem to function well. The job has some inherent contradictions or paradoxes, most them based on money! But I think I can motivate well enough. All of Illinois, go get ’em!”

At home with little else to do in the rented upstairs apartment, I sat down with the running journal to do some figuring. “August 4. Ok. Get this. My 6 month total mileage from 1978 January to June is exactly the same for both years. Talk about consistency!”

These two days of observation actually revealed key aspects of my personality. One: I recognized my challenges with the consistency of concentration required to get things done. Two: I also recognized the value of running in helping me feel actualized and stable over periods of great change.

By August 9 I was feeling out of sorts. “Little sick from stress of job. (She’s) staying with me on this.”

That week I went out to lunch with the boss of Admissions. We piled into the crampled little Chevy Monza the college had given me to drive. The car was a claptrap in many ways. Stuff was hanging off the sides and the stick knob was loose. As we left a stoplight and turned up a hill in downtown Decorah, traffic came to a stop and I was stuck riding the clutch on the uphill. I still wasn’t that adept at driving a stick-shift vehicle, and I couldn’t get the car going frontward again. My boss looked over at me anxiously from the passenger seat and my girlfriend sat rigid in the back. Finally, I lurched the thing into gear and we got going again.

That little episode seemed to impact his trust in me. From then on, I was always getting questioned about what I was doing. He wasn’t the only one. On August 16, I wrote, “Job is going well, but. There’s always buts. I have to learn to function and discern the intentions of people around me!”

What I sensed in myself was a struggle with what modern psychology calls “emotional intelligence.” Between the trouble staying focused during the long stretches of boring office work, the doubts cast my way and a native lack of self-esteem, the Ch-ch-ch-changes were not coming easily.

Decades later I’d learn that my troubles all fell under the category of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD. I didn’t deal with it back then in the most constructive ways. To entertain my mind and win perceived approval from others, I drew cartoons about our work and posted them on the bulletin board in the office. People found them funny, for sure. But there were also some really talented and serious folks with whom I worked. They didn’t need to draw cartoons to get their jobs done. They’d sit there and send out stacks of student appointment cards with hopes of attracting kids during school visits, and I could only handle that repetitious work for an hour or two before going mentally bonkers.

A former co-worker told me decades later that she and my former roommate Keith Ellingson, who sat facing each other in the Admissions office, would often look up at each other when I flaked out and say, “There goes Cud again.”

For all my distraction, I also did some keen homework on what lay ahead. I understood the process of recruiting students in Chicago and Illinois because I’d met with the recruiter that had worked the territory before me. We’d become close over those four years after helping me sign up for Luther. Sometimes we’d collaborated on talking with kids visiting Luther from Illinois. So I knew the admissions routine. But I also knew that he’d been allowed to live in the market full-time, and had built up a healthy market of contacts throughout the state.

By contrast, I was being required to commute to the territory from Decorah every weekend to reach the high schools and college fairs where students could be found.

There was also background noise. The college made the decision to move that successful counselor out of his territory during a period of deep concern over enrollment numbers. When I first interviewed, I did not know that it would be my job to replace him. Once I got the position, I was instructed to resource with him and tap into his network of high school guidance counselors, pastors and Luther Alumni that he used to find and recruit students.

I knew enough to realize he was not all that happy about those changes. In fact, he was legitimately a bit bitter in some respects. So it was tough to ask him to share the knowledge he’d worked so long to accrue as if it was something to be handed over like a book of magic. I learned all that I could those first few weeks and would check in from time to time, but it was clear that he was ready to leave it all behind if he wasn’t appreciated.

I used the information to reach out to some of his contacts, who received me warmly enough. Yet those long-distance phone calls were awkward given our office situation with everyone sitting within earshot of each other in a single room. Whenever folks on the other end of the line asked what happened to the former counselor (whom they really liked) I offered some cloistered line about how there were positive changes in his future and I was taking over. Sometimes there was cool silence on the other end. People aren’t stupid. They can read between the lines. Within a few weeks, I’d be heading on the road to meet some of those people in person. That’s when the real questions got asked, and I told the truth the best I could. “The college made some changes. I’m here to do the best I can.” People seemed to respect that.

Toward the middle of August, I entered and won a road race down in West Union, Iowa. I’d purchased a set of Tiger racing flats and was excited to run in them. But they had pretty thin soles, and they just didn’t feel that fast. During the first four miles, the lead between another runner and I see-sawed back and forth, but as we turned down the last hill I pulled ahead to win in 26:22 for five miles. Ever quick with the wry comment, my former teammate and friend Keith Ellingson who watched the race said, “It looked like both of you were trying to lose.”

I remember thinking, “Fuck you. I did my best…” But honestly, none of us were too commiserative in our racing days. Friends or not, we didn’t go easy on each other much of the time.

The one thing that kept us sane through those dull office days was knowing that we could play Frisbee Golf at the end of the day. I’d gather with Kirk Neubauer, Mike Kust and Keith Ellingson, and a few other guys on alternating days. We’d create ad hoc “holes” around the campus, including one in which we threw our Frisbees from the deck of the Union down to the goalpost on the football field below. Perhaps we didn’t invent the game of Disc Golf back then, but we certainly celebrated it in our own way. The Luther campus with its giant oak trees and rolling topography was a perfect venue. It was an hour or two filled with jokes and teasing with guys that were quick-witted and hilarious. That helped me feel normal during that period of intense change.

That whole summer was a grand experiment in Welcome to the Real World. Adapting to the schedule of a full-time job was admittedly tough for me. In 1979 and ’80, we earned $9500 a year in Admissions, plus travel expenses, which we all tried to pad a little. There were definite limits to that. We even had daily limits on hotel costs, which made it tough at times to find decent accommodations in the Chicago area, where a $50 hotel could turn out to be pretty seedy.

Throughout that summer, I clung to my relationship with my girlfriend. We spent as much time together as possible when she was in town. She had one more semester to finish up at Luther, then she’d be graduating too. Ch-ch-ch-changes were still afoot.

Still don’t know what I was waitin’ for
And my time was runnin’ wild
A million dead end streets and
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
How the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes

Soon it would come time for me to go on the road with recruiting trips to Chicago and the rest of Illinois. I was about to learn about the strange world of windshield time, cheap hotels, and meals on the run. All with the goal of recruiting 70 students to attend Luther College the following year.

Posted in 10K, addiction, adhd, aging, anxiety | Tagged adhd, anxiety, changes, david bowie, Depression, full-time job, job stress, life change, life changes, stress | Leave a comment

50 Years of Running: Snake Eyes

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

During four years of college in Decorah, Iowa, I got to know the landscape pretty well. It helped to be enrolled in a field biology class, where we explored native prairies, caught frogs in cold freshwater springs, did duck surveys at Cardinal marsh, and performed taxidermy on all sorts of found creatures brought to the lab by helpful locals. I learned how to stuff pheasants, great-horned owls, voles and chickadees, and many other species. We’d peel them all the way back to the eyelids, then sew them back together again.

One day I ran out of time to finish up stuffing a squirrel as a museum specimen. I asked some biology buddies to complete the job, then raced off to work the noon shift at the dish room. My job that day was taking glasses off the trays at the head of the line. Suddenly I heard laughter outside the drop zone, and looked up to see a small plate bearing head of a squirrel outlined with a lettuce garnish. In its big teeth was a bright orange carrot. The plate rolled along like balloon in a Thanksgiving Day parade, causing the girl next to me squeal and faint. I calmly plucked the squirrel head from the tray and heard my biology buddies roaring in laughter outside the dishroom. They got me good.

Pastel “Decorah Farm Roads” by Christopher Cudworth, 2020.

Yes, going to Luther College was an organic experience on many levels. Our daily training runs took us far out into farm country. Some of the homesteads were neat and well-kept. Others seemed ready to collapse into the dirt. We ran past muddy yards rife with pigs and cattle, sheep and chickens. Outside the pens, the dank pastures on rocky hillsides bore livestock paths between the black cedars and white birches marking the rugged limestone hills. Steep limestone chimney bluffs stood like sentries overlooking the valleys. Through it all ran the Upper Iowa river, a national wild and scenic waterway. This was the Driftless Region, a section of landscape that escaped glaciers during the Ice Age ten thousand years ago. There were petroglyphs carved into rock by native populations eons ago, and the rocks themselves were deposited by ancient inland seass. Every run was an epic journey through time.

“Decorah Bluffs,” pastel by Christopher Cudworth, 2020.

Among those hills was a never-ending array of wildlife to find. Even in town and on campus, I’d spot Cooper’s hawks, screech owls, wild turkeys, and sometimes even a bald eagle flying overhead. Our national symbol was extremely rare back in the mid-70s. Yet in recent years, the “Decorah Eagles” became Internet stars.

While the wildlife was always interesting, sometimes it was the local human population that was the most interesting to study. Decorah has long stood as a liberal enclave in a largely conservative landscape of conservative farmers. Both these factions contribute to an odd reputation. During our years in college, that little town had the largest number of bars per capita in the entire state. If I recall correctly, it ranked right up there in total alcohol consumption as well.

I sat in a downtown Decorah bar with friends one night watching a man dressed in an all-white cowboy outfit drink until he literally lurched off the barstool and fell to the floor. That brings me to the story of Snake Eyes, the bloodthirsty killer I met while running during the last two weeks of college at Luther.

One of our go-to running routes in Decorah was a pleasant six-mile loop leading from the campus south past Pulpit Rock, through the Decorah campground to a bluffside road under Phelps Park, across town to a bridge over the Upper Iowa, and back to campus past the Ice Cave geological feature. We ran that route at least once a week for all four years at Luther.

During one run on that route with my teammate Paul Mullen, we moved to the edge of the road to avoid an oncoming car and he popped into the air just like he was hurdling a steeplechase barrier. “What the…?” I asked. He turned around and pointed. There, basking in the dust, was a small snake. I looked closer and identified it as a Massassauga rattlesnake. “Good jump,” I told him. “Those are poisonous.”

On a similar warm spring day I was running Under Phelps-Ice Cave alone thanks to class schedule delay that kept me from making the regular workout time. Fit and fast near the end of the track season, I clipped through town and was climbing the hill leading to Ice Cave when a man in an all-white cowboy getup jumped out from behind a tree. He stopped out in the middle of the road and with both hands gesticulating, pointed toward a big tree, and yelled: “Do you wanna see mah snakes?”

That’s when I noticed a streaked spatter of bright red blood covering the front of his pure-white cowboy shirt. My instincts told me to make a right fake and sprint past him to get away. But he jumped both ways as if to block me. So I figured, “Let’s see what this joker is all about…”

Keeping watch from the corner of my eye in case he tried to stab me with something, I walked over to see what he wanted to show me. Plus, I always liked snakes, so I wanted to see what he’d found. Then came the shock. Nailed to the tree was a ring of snakes. There were several different species including a canebrake rattler, a bull snake, a garter snake and a fox snake.

I couldn’t think of much to say other than “Why?”

“I killed ’em mah-self,” he told me.

“I see that,” then I repeated, “Why?”

He stood staring at me for a moment, so I got spooked and turned to leave. Then he jumped back in front of me, so I did my best football fake and darted around him and went running back to campus. Glancing back, I saw him standing alone in the road, looking forlon, as if I’d abandoned him in some moment of need.

He really didn’t seem to understand the nature of my question, “Why?”

I recall that he had Snake Eyes. Two beady dots of black that looked locked into place. Perhaps he was high. Maybe mentally ill. In any case, I was impressed by his ability to find and kill snakes. That’s not an easy task. But to some these days, it has become a profession.

That fellow could probably find work and be happy down in Florida these days where thanks to the release of Burmese pythons into the wild, there is now a dangerously expanding population of those snakes killing local wildlife. That species of python grows larger than fifteen feet, and are definitely hard to catch in boggy conditions. They can bite and coil around anyone that tries to catch them.

A recent news story documented the problem: “It’s official. An invasive Burmese python captured in the Everglades over the weekend has broken the state record measuring 18.9 feet long. The previous record was 18.8 feet long. Ryan Ausburn, a contracted python hunter with the South Florida Water Management District, and Kevin “Snakeaholic” Pavlidis, a contracted python hunter with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, captured the monster-sized python Oct. 2 along the L-28 Tieback Canal about 35 miles west of Miami.”

No one believed me

There were no such problems in Decorah back when I encountered Snake Eyes. When I got back to campus that day, I told the story to my teammates, who laughed at me and said, “Sure, Cud.” So I told them, “Come on, let’s run back out and I’ll show you.”

It was nearly two miles out to the site. We arrived at the big tree where Snakes Eyes had nailed his prey and they were all gone. Nothing remained but the blood marks where the snakes were nailed to the tree. No one really believed my tale of the encounter with Snake Eyes.

But I know what I saw that day.

Or at least, I think I do. Some events are so strange they defy our notions of reality. I’ve told that story dozens of times over the years, because I’m always curious how people will react. It is often hard to tell what people really think about it. Sometimes it feels like people are judging my mental health and social propriety for relating such a weird saga. But I’m a weird thinker anyway, and I’m used to being judged for thinking differently. My experience tells me that many people would rather live a life of quiet denial than deal with the odd realities of society where the madness of human society and wilderness converge.

In fifty years of running, that where I’ve often roamed. It’s hard to explain to some people why runner or other endurance athletes want to go to places where others choose not to go. We push ourselves until all that’s left is a set of Snake Eyes from the fatigue. That’s how we get a glimpse of the twisted nature of our own internal dialogue.

I couldn’t help myself the day I met the blood-smeared guy in the cowboy shirt that day. I should have run away, but I rolled the dice and it came up Snake Eyes.

Posted in addiction, alcohol, anxiety, mental health, mental illness, racing peak, running, track and field | Tagged burmese pythons, Decorah Iowa, everglades, Luther College, rattlesnakes, snake eyes, snake hunters, snakeaholic, snakes | Leave a comment

50 Years of Running: Graduation Blues

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

With nothing left but nationals in the 1979 track season, I walked across the stage to pick up my degree with my parents present during graduation. I’d earned a precious “D” in that horrifically dry and accounting-based marketing class that my girlfriend recommended that I take, and took comfort in the fact that I had enough credits to finish a Bachelors Degree with a 3.1 GPA. No, I wasn’t a star student at the college. There were far better students than I. Smart people. Men and women from my class that would go on to become stellar in their fields. Doctors. Lawyers. CEOs. Teachers. Nurses. Coaches.

Two weeks before graduation I received a call from my staff advisor and the head of the Art Department, Doug Eckheart. “I have some good news for you, Chris,” he told me. “Someone gave you some scholarship money for graduate school.” The amount was $1500. I was excited that someone understood my interest in pursuing that as a career. As it turned out, my mother’s longtime friend from college had followed my art career and wanted to help out. She owned a couple of my works and saw some talent in me.

Eager to find out what that money could do, I immediately contacted Northern Illinois University, the school that my older brother Gary attended. I sent a transcript sent over along with a slide or two of my work. They took a look at my studies and said, “You’ll have to start over here at Northern. Take all four years.” They never asked to see more of my portfolio. Nothing. They’d written me off as too literal, since most of what I’d painted the previous four years was birds. Years later, the same University told my daughter that her Associates degree in photography from College of DuPage would not count toward her education either. “You’d have to start over,” they told her. Such are the echoes of history.

But when I heard that news from Northern, I was aghast. It shocked me so badly that I didn’t even inquire at other graduate programs after that. Plus, I didn’t have time to make that type of decision before the end of the school year. Events at Luther were roaring along, and I still had the race at nationals to consider.

Then someone mentioned that several jobs were opening in the Admissions Department at Luther. “You should apply,” they told me. “You’d be a good representative of the college.” My freshman year roommate Keith Ellingson was also applying. I put in my name, and had a job interview the next day. It did not go well. My mind was so scattered from the end-of-year activities that I interviewed distractedly, and told them so as I was leaving. I dropped a note apologizing for that, and was invited back for another opportunity. That interview went much better. I was hired.

That solved another issue in the moment. What to do about my relationship with the girl I loved? She still had another year of college to finish at Luther. Working in Admissions would allow me to keep close, or so I thought. We talked, and frankly fought a little, about my decision to take the job. The entire mood of those discussions was odd. The campus had fallen silent after the students departed following graduation. We felt both wonderfully alone and isolated at the same time.

Meanwhile, my steeplechase teammate and former roommate Paul Mullen was also in discussion with his girlfriend about post-collegiate plans. None of these decisions were easy. We all fought some.

Meanwhile, without much direction in the wake of regular track season concluding, Paul and I trained together trying to keep our fitness going after the buzz of the season was over. We did a week of maintenance workouts and climbed into the college van to head east to Cleveland with a few other track and field athletes. One of them was our top javelin thrower who led Division III that year. We stopped to visit the campus of Notre Dame University and acted like kids running around the football field tossing Frisbees. Then our javelin star threw out his arm trying to heave the disk down the entire length of the football field. He could not compete at nationals.

The weather was typically sullen and dank out in Cleveland. The excitement of track had by then seeped out of me, especially with all that took place at season’s end. We’d only run about 25 miles that week, and later in life, I learned that I’m a runner that needs to keep the engine revving full bore to compete at my best. Thus during my steeple heat, I managed only a 9:31, several places out of qualifying for finals. Had I made it through, it is unlikely I could have competed. I badly strained the sheath between my calf and Achilles in a bumping accident through the water jump. I could barely run the the next day anyway.

But Paul Mullen ran well in qualifying and made it through to finals. He ran a smart race there as well, and I remember the thrill of seeing him in sixth place–– the final All-American spot––while doing the last hurdle on the backstretch before turning for home. His growing fatigue was evident, but he always had an amazing capacity to run through pain at many levels. Yet with 100 meters to go, another competitor closed on him and Paul missed become an individual All-American by a few steps at the finish. Still, 7th in the country is a damn great finish.

And what a race he ran! Through all the events of graduation and the conflicted feelings of finishing college, he ran a 9:14, the time that I wished I’d run at conference two weeks before. In my book, he’s an All-American. That and other Luther accomplishments deservedly placed in in the Luther Hall of Fame.

Recovery

We drove back from Cleveland and I spent the next week with my girlfriend back at Decorah. She was finishing up some campus project during the final week of May. She’d gotten into reading the C. S. Lewis series the Chronicles of Narnia, and that’s what I did to keep myself occupied between seeing her. Both of us escaped into the fictional tales of a Christlike lion and kings and queens living in another world. Immersing my mind in this stories gave the week a magical feeling. It almost felt like we could walk through to another world as well. Part of me wished that were true.

Then she left for home and my folks arrived in Decorah to bring me back to St. Charles for the first part of the summer until I returned to start the Admission job later on. I’ll admit that I never liked that house where they lived, and I fell into an emotional void. “It is summer and I am haunted by my hormones. You’ve found your dead end, lower limits. Let’s bounce back. There are only rewards in things you can share. Do some.”

Sweet release

Then I got a call from a family that needed someone to drive their vehicle from St. Charles to Ocracoke, North Carolina. I’d never been to that part of the country and the idea of a road trip sounded fun. But when I showed up that weekend to pick up the car, I found out that it was a manual shift Toyota Celica. I’d never driven a stick shift car in my life, so I had no choice but to fake it. I said some ceremonial goodbyes and then kind of eased the thing down the hill from their house to get out of sight behind a thick row of trees. That’s where I practiced how to start and drive the damned thing.

Lurching along at first, I eventually got decent at shifting. Ten miles later I swung onto the expressway for the trip east. At the first toll booth on I-88, I shifted from fifth all the way down to first and the engine roared back like an angry lion. “Well, that’s not good,” I laughed out loud.

Through Indiana and Ohio I went, a young man on a lark. I’d brought along some reading material for the trip, a book by Tom Robbins called Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. It was alternately sexy, hilarious, and philosophical at every turn of the story. The book was about a girl with big thumbs that turned hitchhiking into her life’s adventure, exactly what I needed to read while driving through the initial absurdities of life beyond college.

My first stop going east was in Pittsburgh to stay with an aunt and uncle. Parking on the hills in that city proved frightfully difficult. Then I drove east across the mountains of Pennsylvania to stay at my brother Jim’s house in Lancaster, where I’d lived from the ages of five through twelve.

Then I drove south through Delaware and Virginia. That drive down to Assateague Island turned difficult as rains pelted the East Coast. As I crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, the winds whipped up as a squall covered the road with inches of water. I looked over the side of the bridge that stood high above the bay waters. Suddenly, the Toyota started to hydroplane. The car went sideways and I could do nothing but steer in the direction of the skid and hope that I could avoid going into a total spin. That worked, but after that, I slowed the car to a crawl, inching along in 3rd gear for miles as cars passed me by. When I reached the other side, I got out of the car, walked behind some trees at the side of the road and took a long piss behind some bushes in a grand combination of emotional and physical relief.

The weather finally cleared as I drove over the causeways leading to Ocracoke. I saw terns and gulls and willets flying around, and caught glimpses of egrets and herons in the backwaters. I found the house where I’d be staying and collapsed on the couch with some take-out food and a six pack of beer. I picked up a book they had at the cabin about the ghost of Blackbeard the Pirate, who’d made a life around Ocracoke. I got scared as hell when a storm arrived and whipped the pine branches against the windows, making me think, in my half-drunken state, the Blackbeard arrived to take away my soul. That night, I huddled under the covers and fell into a deep sleep.

The painting of a Least Tern and ghost crab that I produced after a trip to Ocracoke, North Carolina.

In the morning, the air was fresh and salt-tinged, so I drove over to the beach. I pulled on my running shoes and went for a jog up the sand with the waves smashing nearby on the shore. It was warm and humid out, with a liquid form of wind coming in off the water. The further I ran, the less I felt the need for clothes on my body. Well up the shore from the parking lot, there were no people in sight. So I stripped naked, stashed my shoes in the dunes and ran another mile or two up the shore. Finally, I saw a couple swimming in the ocean. They were naked like me, and the white of her breasts and the cheeks of his ass made the whole world seem free and real. I waved, kept on running, and finally turned around to run back and gather my clothes from the spot where I’d hid them in the dunes. Yes, I’d marked the spot carefully.

That week I went birding quite a bit and added eleven new species to my life list. Somewhere along the way, I met a surfer-carpenter dude who lived in an house built on pylons just outside town. He had several female companions hanging out with him, and on my last night in Ocracoke, they invited me to have a going away party. I drank blueberry daiquiris all night long and fell asleep fully drunk back at my house .

The next morning, I was scheduled to fly out of Ocracoke in Piper Aztec plane that would take me all the way back to Chicago. I was still half-drunk. My eyes didn’t want contact lenses on them, so I gathered up my stuff, tossed it in the back of the plane, and sat in the seat next to the pilot. He could sense my condition, and said, “Well, I think we have enough runway to take off.” Then he gave a little chuckle.

I stared ahead with my blurred vision. My head was a fog of blueberries and alcohol. I was sunburnt and astigmatic without my contacts, yet happy from running naked on the beach and having a chance to decompress. I didn’t really give a damn what happened to me that morning. The propeller roared into action and the plane started to whip its way down the runway. As the sounds of sand under the tires bhissed beneath us, we lifted into the air over the Outer Banks. I glanced down at the blue ocean with eyes that could not see clearly and gave a soft laugh. Then I closed them as we banked west away from the sunrise. That’s how my life after college began.

Posted in aging, alcohol, anxiety, Christopher Cudworth, college, Depression, healthy aging, healthy senior, nature, race pace, racing peak, running, running shoes, track and field | Tagged alcohol, blueberry daquiris, blurred vision, college ggraduation, contact lenses, girlfriend problems, ocracoke north carolina, outer banks, ralationships issues, relationshiops, toyota celica, vision | Leave a comment

50 Years of Running: On the Runway to Life

Posted on December 11, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

At the end of January Term, with a mere197 miles under my belt, it was time to get serious about training. But there was also the question of a serious relationship going on, and I didn’t mind that one bit. At some point my girlfriend grabbed my running journal and wrote me a note…

We traveled that next weekend to Grinnell, Iowa with my former roommate Paul Mullen and his soon-to-be fiance. He and I went to the indoor track at Grinnell and paced through a 4:44 mile just to see how it felt. The weekend after that, I ran a 4:28 indoor mile and a 9:48 two mile. The first felt “easy” and the second one “smooth.” That’s all you really want from that first indoor race. To feel decent. My mileage was back up to 66 miles and my love rating was off the charts. I wrote in the journal: “I’m whipped. And you KNOW it girl.”

I came down with the flu and a cold and skipped an indoor meet. I still managed 59 miles through the illness but was careful not to overtrain with too much fast pace. The next week I raced a 9:36 two-mile and a 4:31 at the UNI Dome. That was the site of an amusing mile the previous year. I’d barely made the bus after getting it on with my junior-year girlfriend that morning. The whole way down to Cedar Falls from Decorah I was sort of lazy and sleepy from the lovemaking. We parked our stuff in some far corner of the UNIdome and I laid down to wait through the entire meet because my sole race that day, the mile, was next-to-last on the schedule.

I dozed. And dozed. Then I heard “Last call, one-mile run.” I snapped to attention, pulled on my racing spikes and ran over to the starter. “Are you Cudworth?” the guy asked. “Yes,” I replied breathlessly. “Well, line up.”

The gun went off, and I ran with the pack through a 200-meter lap before moving up. My legs felt great and the pace was manageable. I moved up more and was in position to kick with the leaders with a lap to go. Sprinting around the track, I felt free and loose, and finished in 4:21, my best indoor mile ever. Absent the regular nerves I built up for races, I was free and easy that day.

In late February of 1979, my girlfriend left to attend an education seminar of some sort in Texas. “She left for Dallas this morning for a week,” I wrote. “I’m off tune without her. My schedule today was quite hectic, but I managed some effective racing, An up in mileage is now in order. Other competitors kicked your butt. Get some work, studying and painting done.”

Then I mused, “I love (her) she has helped me come to grips with some things about myself. But it is up to me to remain, no, develop even further.”

The following week we traveled for a dual meet in LaCrosse. I always loved racing against those guys, and I’d plugged in a week of 71 miles with two-a-days as the weather started to moderate into the 20s and 30s. I won the two-mile in a smart race, running 9:27 with a hard finishing kick on the 176-yard indoor track. “Fast run Thursday helped my confidence.” That meet closed out our indoor schedule. I went home for spring break and got in training weeks of 70 and 71 miles. the weather snuck into the 40s.

While at home, I watched my younger brother Greg, who attended Kent State on a full scholarship, play a basketball game at Northern Illinois. I was stunned at the nasty behavior of the NIU fans, some of whom ran on the court next to the Kent huddle during a time out. The rest of the game they screamed and acted like idiots. The Northern team was a bunch of muscleheaded brutes, and I left that contest angry and frustrated. But my brother played with intensity and cool. I admired him so much. He’d fulfilled my father’s wishes of having a truly elite athlete in the family.

The weather warmed into the 60s the third week of March, as my girlfriend and I traded visits while at home in Illinois. I ran four mile intervals under 5:00 per mile, then banged out a 14-miler a couple days later in 1:35. That was sub-7:00 pace. I was starting to feel real fitness and wound up the week with 82 miles. I wrote down some goals for the spring.

On March 28, Coach Bob Naslund assigned us a set of three-mile “intervals” around a route we called Short Loop. The temps were 50 degrees and breezy, and we warmed up for twenty minutes, then took off on the first three-mile interval. We finished that one in 17:17. Thoroughly warmed up now, we ran the second three-miler in 16:17, then finished with one in 16:45. That was nine miles at about 80% effort.

That weekend at Augustana, on March 31st, I ran a 14:37 three-mile after a 78-mile training week. I’d wrapped up February with 251 miles and March with 303 miles. That was 751 miles leading into the outdoor season.

The first week of April, we cranked out a session of 20 330s at 55-57. I wrote, “Just plain horseshit weather. 50 mph wind.” That weekend I raced the first steeplechase of the season with a time of 9:30.7. A good start to my goal of qualifying for nationals.

The previous year, I’d won a steeple in a declared time of 8:47. Problem was, the lap-counters made a mistake and shot bell lap gun with two laps to go, not one. So I kicked in with the win. The time, though highly inaccurate, somehow got out to state officials, and I got an inquiry about running the steeple at the Drake Relays against the likes of Henry Marsh, the American record holder at around 8:15. I think the word got back to Drake and others that my race was a lap short.

On April 17 we traveled to LaCrosse for an outdoor dual meet. Again, I loved racing against that team on every occasion. There was something about the dedication of their guys that I respected. Strapping on my spikes, I jogged to warm up and felt exceptionally loose. Within the first mile, I’d grabbed a lead and ran to a 14:40 win in the three-mile. And just like the race indoors where I won the two-mile in 9:27 and got a compliment from one of the LaCrosse guys, a pair of their runners trotted past and said, “Great job.” Nothing means more to a runner than a compliment from a competitor. You have to earn those.

To me, that was always what running was about. Finding that sweet spot or groove where the pace feels good and you run relaxed. But track and field is not the most relaxing environment in many ways. There are so many races and any delay in the meet screws up the warmup schedule. During high school dual meets, I was typically competing in four different events; the two-mile, high jump, triple jump, and mile. Several times I won all four. But I should have been concentrating on improving at distance running, not messing around with my keenly average jumping abilities.

Strange times

Such are the strange aspects of track and field. At Luther, we also endured many long bus rides across Iowa to compete at far-flung colleges such as Buena Vista, where the 50+ mph winds were so fierce that the pole vault was canceled. I ran a 9:49 steeple that day against a guy from Dubuque College who wore painters’ gloves on his hands and placed his hands on the barriers to vault over them rather than hurdle. I got blown backward on one hurdle and actually grazed my butt cheek on the 4″ x 4″ barrier.

That race was frustrating because I was hoping to get a qualifying mark for national. The standard had dropped from 9:35 my freshman year to 9:24 as a senior. I knew my fitness was good enough. I just wanted the chance at a good race. On April 28 we traveled to the Drake Relays where I ran a 3:09 3/4 mile on the Distance Medley. That showed good promise on the speed end of my training.

The pressures of classes began to add up by early May. I was struggling through a Marketing course that my girlfriend suggested I take. It was taught by an accounting professor named Frank Barth, so the subject matter had nothing to do with creativity or ideation. It was all about the numbers, how to budget for marketing against other expenses, and I was in that class with a bunch of number crunchers. I almost failed the course. I tersely noted: “Getting things done. 5 1/2 hours of sleep.”

We held a dual meet on Luther’s crunchy crushed brick tack and I ran an unmotivated and exhausted 4:34 mile time. The entire scene was getting to me.

“(She) and I need a change of pace. She is too serious for me at times. I desire a strong relationship and she is one to handle it, but the control ebbs and flows so commonly that I am at a loss to refuse the good parts, the fun parts, and my errors and flaws shoe. I still love her.”

What did I mean by that? I wanted, no…desired simplicity. And wasn’t feeling it. On any front.

My mileage dropped to 48 that difficult week of April 29-May 4th. I didn’t even have time to get out birding when the spring migration began. I could hear warblers singing in the trees as the weather warmed, but didn’t have the time to get out and see them. That was a shame because, for four years at Luther, I’d delved deep into the woods in all directions. I even had a secret spot southeast of town where one could stand on a bluff and look back up the Oneota valley and see the campus. In that gorge, I’d once found a Townsend’s Solitaire, a wandering migrant from the Pacific Northwest that showed up on a cool fall day the previous autumn. That was magical. I’d experienced many such moments in the hills and fields around Decorah, Iowa.

That love of the region was all coming to an apparent close as the semester wound down. There were two big orders of business before me in the track and field world. First; competing at the IIAC Conference meet, and second, getting the nationals qualifying time for the steeplechase.

There was just one problem. Our conference rivals, Central College, had grown so strong as a track and field program our 17th straight conference title was no lock. Leading up to the meet, Coach Naslund was figuring points and had us coming out on top if everything went well in every event. The biggest challenge was, quite surprisingly, the emergence of several fast distance runners within the conference. These were Jerry Fitszimmons of Central and Jim Thompson of Wartburg, who was running out of his mind times.

That Friday night, our 10,000 meter guys Joel Redman and Paul Mullen went 1-2, a good start to the meet. Paul was coming back the next day to run in the steeplechase. We’d both been to nationals a number of times during our career, and he was the slightly better runner than I. But having run a 14:37 three-mile earlier in the season, I was asked to double in the 5000 at conference.

So here was Paul, trying to run a good steeple with a 10K from the night before in his legs. Then there was me, trying to run the steeple and save something in my legs for the 5000 meters an hour or so later.

Have rested some that week to begin peaking for the last meets of the year, I felt easy and smooth in winning the steeplechase in 9:20.2. That was the qualifying mark I needed to make nationals, and I didn’t feel like I’d taxed myself too badly to double back in the 5K. Mullen placed second behind me in amazing fashion considering the fitness required for that 10K-Steeple double in 24 hours.

Fighting words

The meet was close from beginning to end. Tempers flared when one of our premier athletes, a 400-meter hurdler named Jerry Peckham, broke his leg while running over the last barrier. He’d been pool-training all season due to a stress fracture, and was on pace to win the meet and qualify for nationals when the leg snapped with a loud noise and he crumpled to the track. In horrific fashion, some of our opponent’s athletes cheered and laughed while mocking the injury. Fights nearly broke out at the track.

With even more motivation, our top distance guys fought hard for places and ran well. But with an event to go, it came down to the 4 X 400 relay and one other event: the pole vault.

Perhaps Luther won the 4 X 400. I don’t recall. But our pole vaulter elected to pass heights all the way up to fifteen feet in an attempt to win the title. Then he missed all three attempts at the height. With zero points in the pole vault, Luther lost the conference meet for the first time in nearly two decades.

We were angry, depressed and frustrated at the outcome. Those of us that attempted to double, and did, were shot-through with frustration. All our pole vaulter had to do was make a decent height, such as 13′ 6″, and we’d have won the overall title. Back home in Decorah, we headed down to the bars to drink away our frustrations. Some guy at the bar made a comment to one of our distance guys about losing the meet, and he decked the guy with a punch.

Looking back, I have a sole regret from that day. If I’d not needed to double, my time in the steeple would likely be five or even ten seconds faster. That would have positioned me in an entirely different frame of mind going into nationals. Running a 9:15 would have been a great confidence booster. But our priority as distance guys at Luther was always the team. I ran the 5K and didn’t score any points. The pace was wicked and even with fresh legs, I’m not sure I would have placed. But at least I gave it a shot. If I hadn’t run that 5K, I might be wondering forty years later whether I could have gotten a few points and saved our day.

Against the bigger picture in life, these things don’t really seem to mean that much. But they do teach us a level of integrity that comes with the territory of sacrificing individual glory for the sake of the team. That’s a much more valuable skill in the real world.

Posted in 400 meter intervals, 400 workouts, 5K, Christopher Cudworth, college, competition, steeplechase, track and field | Tagged bob naslund, Central College, competition, Luther College, luther track and field, sacrifice, track and field | Leave a comment

50 Years of Running: Wonder Left

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

After the 800-mile season in cross country in the fall of ’78, it felt good to back off running twice-a-day. But then I sprained an ankle playing pickup basketball. So I was out of action completely for four days. I could feel that odd sensation of being past-peak condition as a runner when it’s best to rest, combined with the weird anxiety of not training every day following all that intense running.

The relationship front got strange all over again. I wrote in my journal, “Don’t surround yourself with yourself. Is she doing that? She let’s me at her. I can’t hold on sometimes. She’s scared me, told me away too often.”

Then we had another flareup. “(She) and I had a terrific fight, but I really love her the way she is. Hope we make it through Christmas break.”

The fact of the matter is that we were clearly involved in the relationship for different reasons. Her objective was finding a lifelong partner and moving into life right after college. My objective was finding myself after a few years of drifting self-doubt. Those are two quite different places to be. She’d lost weight and looked her finest going into that junior year in college. I was hyper-lean from all that running and entirely focused on using that last year at Luther to do the best I could, possibly even making All-American in the steeplechase. I was already a team All-American, why not shoot bigger? In any case, she and I were in different places on the maturity scale.

Christmas break

A few days before heading home for break, I sold a few hundred dollars worth of paintings at a show held in Preus library. Then I caught a ride back to St. Charles after we made up from our fight. We planned a meetup at her folk’s place.

On the night I was scheduled to drive up to her house, it was freezing cold and the ground was covered in deep snow. I pulled on my coat and went out to the garage. When I bent down to whip open the garage door, something snapped in the middle of my back. I stood upright in pain from a spasm right below the right shoulder blade. It hurt so bad I could barely breathe. Still, I climbed into the car and drove the thirty miles north to her house. That night, I limited my movement to keep the back spasm from cramping. It was awkward as heck trying to concentrate on the subtleties of parental conversation Taking a deep breath, or laughing, God Forbid, sent shocks of pain through my body.

Obviously, having only dated her a few months, I was still in the “test phase” of boyfriendhood. Her folks were kind in many ways, but there was always a sense that I might not be their first choice in background or career for their daughter. Honestly, they were right about that. Being married to an artist and writer is no great bargain. That fall at Luther my girlfriend and I were in conversation with a well-known staff couple with similar backgrounds. She worked in the business office, and he was an artist. Without any real provocation, the woman rolled her eyes and warned my girlfriend, “Omigod, don’t marry an artist.” Her artist husband gave a nervous shrug.

I sat at her place that Christmas break with all these conflicting thoughts in my mind. My back was in a compromised physical condition so distracting that it took all my concentration just to talk, much less impress her parents with my sense of humor and whatever else I had to offer. As we gathered to exchange gifts I half-wished to just get in the car and drive home. But Christmas was a big celebration at their house, and I stayed through dinner to open a few gifts. They gave me a deerskin art portfolio. That made me feel better about my artistic endeavors. Perhaps they believed in me after all?

As the hour got late, her folks went to the living room to watch TV. She and I went downstairs to fool around, and even in my stiffened state (I’m talking about my back…you dirty bastards) we made a nice evening of it.

Compromised vision

It got quite late and my hard contact lenses were now so dry I could barely keep them in my eyes the pain was so bad. I took them out for a break and to my surprise, I could see clearly without them. Apparently, the constriction of the eyes after all those hours of wearing the contacts corrected my vision. I climbed into the cold car after a kiss goodnight and drove home with my back spasm still making me sit erect in the seat.

The next morning, my bad vision was back to “normal.” That little period of good vision in the wake of contact lens fatigue was a little miracle.

At home without her, my thoughts turned to the indoor track season ahead. I wrote: “You’ve got to balance out flexibility with running to prevent these unneeded injuries,” On December 29 I noted. “The spasm really hurts!” First it got better for a couple days, then I reinjured it on December 31, and resignedly commented, “Well, I’ve got to get this back healthy again. I’m getting too soft and out of shape. It’s time to begin rolling again.”

The holiday season and our recent fights still had me tense. “(She) seems like she’s playing games although she probably isn’t. I’m always suspicious. We need to do some fun stuff together.”

The fact of that relationship is that my girlfriend was a “type” that my brothers and I all dated at some point. They all looked alike. Dark hair. Green eyes. They all had a domineering personality, perhaps a little bitchy in some ways. But man, I loved her. The intensity of feeling I had for her was all-consuming. We shared our worlds the best we could. Certainly, I have no regrets.

But I think there was some aspect of those women that my brothers and each needed to experience. Perhaps it was the “anti-Mom” type that we saw in them. What else explains the striking similarity?

Back to running

I only managed 53 total miles of running that December. To get back on track, I mapped out a January plan with increasing mileage. But the weather dipped to -20 degrees below zero. I still ran six miles that day in 39 minutes. “Beautiful, quiet, snowfall,” I wrote.

As the team returned to running together, my roommate Dani Fjelstad pulled me aside one day and said, “This running six minutes per mile every day is crazy,” he observed. “Let’s you and I build a base the right way. We’ll do LSD (Long, Slow, Distance) together.”

I planned out the month with 30 miles, 50 miles, and two weeks of 65 miles in January. My January Term project was just drawing all day, so there was little stress involved, for once. The cold winter weather in Decorah was hard, yet beautiful. The snow-packed white roads that we covered on dark afternoons guided us for miles and miles. My favorite was a route called Wonder Left, a 9.3 mile loop through the back hills of farm country northwest of the Luther Campus. I could feel the fitness returning, and soon enough we’d be racing again.

My pastel painting (2020) of Wonder Left, one of the routes we loved to run at Luther College.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, college, competition, cross country, running, track and field, training | Tagged Christmas break, college track and field, fights, injuries, injury, love, Luther College, relationships, running injuries | Leave a comment

50 Years of Running: Alternative Realities

Posted on December 9, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

The circumstances by which I wound up running for Luther College were serendipitous. By the end of senior year in high school, I’d applied and was accepted to Augustana College in Rock Island. During my visit out there, I ran with the guys and got a taste of the difference between high school and college running. But there wasn’t much. Running is running. You go out with the guys, try to keep up, and do your best.

Augustana College

The reasons we compete for one school or another are not always definitive.

But my grades weren’t stellar in high school, and Augustana accepted my application with a caveat that I’d be on academic probation for that first term of college. That turned me off. My native resistance to authority and naturally competitive mink-like character was exacerbated by life with a sometimes exasperating father who was frustrated by the fact that some of his sons struggled with grades just like he did at Cornell University.

But I’ve figured all that out over many decades, and I’ve come to realize that ADHD runs in our family, along with anxiety and some depressive tendencies. Oh, that someone could have helped me recognize that much earlier in life. It all made decision-making that much harder.

In 1975, I was a ship adrift when my friend Paul Morlock announced that he’d be attending Luther College. I visited the campus that summer with my father and fell in love with the place. Back home, we canceled the Augustana application and they didn’t seem to mind. They even sent my $100 application fee back. The very next year, a teammate and close friend of mine from St. Charles HS also applied to Augie, then changed his mind to attend Luther as well. They did not refund his $100 application fee.

Walking on Luther’s campus as freshman with Paul Morlock, my classmate and friend from St. Charles High School. He was the one that found and enrolled at Luther. I followed suit in July the summer before our freshman year.

I’ve considered what it might have been like to attend Augie because I got to know many of the runners there over the years. I ran against many of them during high school, including Chuck Christensen of Dekalb and Dave Scott from Fremd. Thanks to our competitive connections over those four years, a few Augie runners even showed up at Luther to hang out and go drinking. Small Christian colleges with decent running traditions tend to attract the same kind of people. So while we were clearly rivals, we also understood that as programs and individuals we really weren’t that different.

Plus the Augustana coach Paul Olson was a Luther graduate. I liked Olson when I met him first in the spring of 1975, and his Augustana program turned out many fine runners; Dan Copper, John Hammermeister, and many others.

He and Kent Finanger ran similar cross country programs, and Olson coached track at Augustana with his wild-maned Fred Whiteside as an assistant coach. But there was one aspect of Olson that I did not appreciate until I heard him speak at a Luther track reunion two years ago. His eloquence and breadth of thought impressed me deeply. He would have been a great English professor and possible mentor to me if I’d attended Augustana. That could have been life-changing as well.

I have a close friend that wasn’t a runner who attended Augie. I consider him one of the most insightful and best-educated people I know. He majored in English at Augustana and also has a wonderful grasp of history, religion, and many other subjects. I did well enough in college with a 3.1 GPA, and Luther took a much more relaxed attitude toward my 24 ACT score (the school’s average) and said, “Your many activities indicate you’ll do well in college.” Talk about a sense of approval…

My point here is that I might have thrived at Augustana as well as Luther College. My own daughter elected to attend Augie after earning her Associate degree in photography and communications from College of Dupage. Unfortunately, she was going to school during a period when my wife was going through intense treatment for ovarian cancer. Then, my daughter’s credits did not transfer directly to Augustana as promised. Her experience, as a result, was less than ideal. But I still hold the college in high esteem.

North Central

There were a few other possible college choices as well. Most notably, I received a recruiting letter from Coach Al Carius at North Central College during my junior year in high school. Sadly, my impression of the school was not based on knowledge of the running program, but on a judgment of their facilities. That same year at Districts, I’d tried to visit the bathroom in the fieldhouse only to find a long line waiting for a lone toilet in the middle of the room. I swore to myself at that moment, “I am never going to attend this school.”

Leading out the race against Naperville Central at NCC.

These days, North Central has some of the finest facilities in all the nation. The school has hosted national championships for indoor and outdoor track, and Al Carius was named the Coach of the Century for his success at the Division III level.

A few years after graduating from Luther, I wrote an article about North Central and Al Carius for the Illinois Runner, a monthly newspaper published by Rich Elliott, whom I’d gotten to know through the road racing circuit. I wrote for the paper on a regular basis, and even designed the logo.

Having learned far more about Carius over the years than I originally knew, I was excited to visit the program and go for a run with the crop of athletes he was coaching in 1984. The banter and teasing during the run was so familiar. One of the less-speedy guys on the team was leading the pack that day, and the better guys were making light of the situation. It felt like I knew everyone and was a member of the team. I realized that I could have fit right in with the North Central program too. I might have struggled to make the Top Seven all four years, but by the time I was a senior at Luther, I was running times equal to their fourth through seventh men. So who knows? That’s an alternative reality consideration as well.

I did set my 5000 PR at an All-Comer’s meet on North Central’s excellent all-weather track in 1984. Jim Spivey won the event that night in around 14:00 flat. I finished at 14:47. The race was held at midnight due to the number of competitors that showed up for the meet. It took hours to run heats of events like the 400 and 800. But I sat there waiting for a chance to run because I knew that I was fit and wanted to run against some of the best area competitors. I was probably around 10th-14th place, but I didn’t care. I’d run a PR that night. That was all that mattered.

That same summer, I showed up at the qualifying meet for the Illinois Prairie State Games. Anxious and eager to make the team, I poked around with the organizers and the coaches scheduled to run the team; Al Carius and Joe Newton of York. Both were known for their powerful motivational abilities, but with somewhat different styles. In any case, I think they found my nervous questions to be a bit revealing about my personality and perspectives. So perhaps it would have been helpful during college to have the likes of Al Carius to cut through my anxieties and build self-esteem. He did it for many runners over the years.

Out East

Jeff Bradley of Millersville circa 1973.

We’re all pulled and pushed by forces we don’t always recognize in life. During college at Luther, my brother Jim wrote me a letter wishing that he’d talked to the coaches at Millersville, the college he attended. Jim was friends with Jeff Bradley, one of the best runners to emerge from that D3 school. After moving to Paoli, Pa., after college, we raced in a ten-miler that he won. I ran 54:00 on an immensely hilly Lancaster Country course where Millersville runners such as Alan Treffinger also competed. whom I competed against in national cross country meets.

Recently, I had conversations with a former St. Charles runner Greg Birk, who half-jokingly asked me, “Why didn’t I try to get you to come to Wabash?” Birk was recently installed in the athletic Hall of Fame at that school. His career in marathons is prodigious, competing all over the world. But frankly, I was a bit intimidated by Greg as well as his training buddy Tom Burridge, the Batavia sensation who went to the University of Kentucky and ran a 13:45 track 5K and went on to set the American record in the half marathon.

And that’s where my pontification about alternative realities comes to an abrupt halt. The program at Kentucky was rife with Illinois runners such as Craig Young and Ron Ackerman, my former teammate at Kaneland High school. I watched Ron run the first leg of a 4 X 1-mile relay at Drake. He handed off at 4:01. I will never claim that I could have run for a program like Kentucky.

I guess I feel justified in asking “what might have been” considering the move that I was somewhat forced to make in the middle of my high school career when my family moved from Elburn to St. Charles.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, college, competition, cross country, track and field, training | Tagged Al Carius, Augustana College, North Central College, paul olson, ron ackerman, training, University of Kentucky, wabash college | 1 Comment

50 Years of Running: How the Big Boys Do It

Posted on December 8, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

Following our second-place finish at Division III nationals, Coach Kent Finanger suggested we all travel to Madison to watch the Division 1 national meet in Wisconsin. Even with classes going on and the need to catch up, a bunch of us piled into cars for the two-hour drive to Yahara Hills, a golf course on the southeast side of Madtown.

It snowed during the weekend, so the course was covered with a modest layer of white stuff. It wasn’t deep, but it made footing a challenge. Those conditions reminded us of the national meet we ran in Cleveland in 1976, when inches of snow fell and the cold winds were fierce. That was not a fun day.

Still high from our accomplishment that Saturday, we came to Madison hoping to see a great race among the college elites. A runner from Oregon named Alberto Salazar was making his first impressions on the world stage by 1978. His teammate Rudy Chapa was also running well that season. Yet they faced a stiff challenge from a Washington State runner named Henry Rono and a tough UTEP team.

James Munyala (at right) Michael Musyoki with Thom Hunt behind them. Dan Henderson, Alberto Salazar, Bruce Bickford (I think) Rudy Chapa, Marc Hunter (Cleveland) Henry Rono. Who else can people identify from this Sports Illustrated photo from 1978?

As it turned out, that head-to-head battle between Rono and Salazar did not take place at Yahara Hills. The cold weather and snow was not to Rono’s liking. He faded back in the pack after the first mile or so. The top ten finishers in the race still ran in the mid 29s for 10K.

Anyone that followed cross country and track-and-field from that era recognizes the names of the Top Ten runners (and their schools) in Madison that day. The University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) was a dominant force, winning the title over Oregon and others. UTEP and Washington were both known for recruiting African runners to build their teams. That practice provided great competitive and educational opportunities for those men, while making American cross country and track fields stronger thanks to the competition levels created by world-class runners in the States.

For all the battles between the Big Boys of NCAA Division 1, there was one exceptional standout that no one predicted to show up in the Top Ten. That was Dan Henderson, the Division III runner that had won the race just two days before. The NCAA stipulated that any D3 runner in the Top 5 at their national meet would be allowed to compete in the Division 1 race.

That wasn’t an easy proposition for any D3 runner, but quite a few tried it out over the years. The fact that Henderson raced to a Top 10 finish is fascinating. We cheered and roared as he strode along in his Wheaton College jersey with bright orange matching cap. You can see his face and hat over the right shoulder of Alberto Salazar.

Henderson bested the likes of D1 elite such as James Munyala of UTEP, Thom Graves of Auburn, future Olympian Jim Spivey of Indiana, Rodolpho Gomez of UTEP, Bruce Bickford of Northeastern U, Randy Jackson of Wisconsin, and Mark Nenow of Kentucky.

A fascinating summary of D3 athletes competing at the D1 invitational resides on the Pomona-Pitzer website. I’m copying and pasting it here because it ends with the fascinating statement that D3 athletes no longer received invitations to compete at the D1 level after 1991.

Division III runners at the Division I meet

At the start of NCAA Divisions (I, II, and III) in 1973, the individual winners of the NCAA III and NCAA II (plus a few additional runners in the early years) were invited to compete in the NCAA I meet on Monday – just two days after winning their own division meet on Saturday.

The NCAA Cross Handbook carried this text:

“It has been established for the 1973 Cross Country Championships that the first five finishers in Divisions II and III will be allowed to compete in the Division I Championships.

In 1974 and in subsequent years, the numbers shall be six from Division II and four from Division III. The individual finishers will be able to earn medals, but their finishes won’t be counted in team point totals.”

This made for some very difficult racing challenges. For example, former SUNY Cortland coaching legend Jack Daniels relates: “We drove to nationals when Marybeth won (in 1989 at Rock Island, Illinois) and drove home all night after the race, arriving at 8AM on that Sunday morning. She got some new clothes and we drove to Annapolis for the Monday DI race. I doubt she was well rested for that one.”

Likewise, Haverford star Seamus McElligott won the D3 meet in 1990 in 24:46 (8k) in Grinnell, Iowa. Less than 48 hours later he earned All-American honors in the D1 meet in Knoxville, Tennessee. McElligott, the D3 runner-up in 1989, traveled with legendary Haverford coach Tom Donnelly through Chicago to Knoxville, where he clocked 30:13 (10k) to finish 35th and nabbed the final All-American spot –even defeating D2 Champ Doug Hanson (North Dakota State) by one second and two places. McElligott was the final D3 runner to accomplish the feat. His remaining career included making a U.S. team to World XC in 1996 and competing in the 1992 Olympic Trials in the 10,000m. He died in 1998 at the age of 29. (Thanks to Dave Devine for this story and details)

From 1982-1990, the invitation to run in the Division I meet was then limited to only the Division III champion, and then invitations stopped completely before the 1991 season. Division III coaches recall that the Division I coaches weren’t happy with lower-division runners taking All American spots from Division I runners.

Men NCAA Division III Runner Result at Division I Meet

1973 5. Fernando Suarez, SUNY Oswego 105^th at Washington St. U. (6M), 30:22.8

2. Glenn Behnke, North Central 112^th, 30:26.2

4. Francis Verdoliva, SUNY Oswego 114^th, 30:27.4

1974 1. David Moller, Rochester 19^th at Indiana Univ. (6M), 30:27

3. David Teague, Hamline 74^th, 31:19

1975 2. Joel Jamison, Occidental 31^st at Penn State Univ. (6M), 29:34

4. Bruce Fischer, North Central 171^st, 30:52.9

3. Peter Kummant, Case Western 213^th, 31:23.8

1976 2. Bob Hodge, Lowell 22^nd at North Texas State (6M), 29:11

1. Dale Kramer, Carleton 70^th, 29:49

4. Frank Richardson, MIT 140^th, 30:20

1977 1. Dale Kramer, Carleton 46^th at Washington State Univ. (10k), 30:08.7

2. Domenic Finelli, Brandeis 121^st, 30:57.2

1978 1. Dan Henderson, Wheaton 10^th at Univ. of Wisconsin (10k), 29:48.5

3. Jeff Milliman, North Central 144^th, 31:34.6

1979 1. Steve Hunt, UMass-Boston 85^th at Lehigh Univ. (10k), 30:49.4

3. Paul Mausling, Macalester 92^nd, 30:53.2

4. Jeff Milliman, North Central 147^th, 31:31.2

2. Michael Palmquist, St. Olaf 31:33.6

1980 3. Mark Whalley, Principia 62^nd at Wichita, KS (10k), 30:31.8

1. Jeff Milliman, North Central 101^st, 30:54.3

2. Paul Mausling, Macalester 130^th, 31:18.1

4. Clark Cox, Occidental 148^th, 31:27.8

1981 1. Mark Whalley, Principia 50^th at Wichita, KS (10k), 30:20.9

2. Michael Axinn, Chicago 74^th, 30:40.8

4. Steve Underwood, Hope 118^th, 31:21.4

1982 1. Nicholas Manciu, St. Thomas did not run

1983 1. Tony Bluell, North Central did not run

1984 1. Mark Beeman, Brandeis 60^th at Penn State Univ. (10k), 30:55.9

1985 1. James White, UMass-Dartmouth 61^st at Marquette Univ. (10k), 31:07.93

1986 1. Arnie Schraeder, UWisc-Stevens Point 11^th at Univ. of Arizona (10k), 31:14.49

1987 1. Jukka Tammisuo, St. Lawrence 73^rd at Univ. of Virginia (10k), 30:42.55

1988 1. David Terronez, Augustana 66^th at Iowa State Univ. (10k), 30:42

1989 1. David Terronez, Augustana 56^th at US Naval Academy (10k), 31:01.65

1990 1. Seamus McElligott, Haverford 35^th at Tennessee (10k), 30:13

Women NCAA Division III Runner Result at Division I Meet

1981 1. Cynthia Sturm, Westfield 52^nd at Wichita, KS (5k), 17:35.2

1982 1. Tori Neubauer, UWisc-La Crosse 50^th at Indiana Univ. (5k), 18:02.1

1983 1. Tori Neubauer, UWisc-La Crosse 11^th at Lehigh Univ. (5k), 17:01.0

1984 1. Julia Kirtland, Macalester 25^th at Penn State Univ. (5k), 16:59.6

1985 1. Dorcas Denhartog, Middlebury did not run

1986 1. Lisa Koelfgen, St. Thomas did not finish at Univ. of Arizona (5k)

1987 1. Shelley Scherer, Carleton 59^th at Univ. of Virginia (5k), 17:23.33

1988 1. Anna Prineas, Carleton 21^st at Iowa State Univ. (5k), 17:09

1989 1. Marybeth Crawley, SUNY Cortland 77^th at US Naval Academy (5k), 18:00.06

1990 1. Victoria Mitchell, SUNY Cortland did not run

The list does show how difficult it is to run back-to-back elite-level races, especially after a long season. Plus male D3 athletes step up from racing five miles to running 10K. That’s harder than it sounds.

In any case, it was thrilling to be present the day that Dan Henderson represented D3 with such an elite performance. He later led the Olympic Trials 5K race for a few laps. I recall his long, smooth stride as something unique and inspiring.

Luther vs. D1 schools

I certainly have no pretense of doing better than any of these D3 athletes if I had ever raced at the D1 level. The elite D3 guys raced a minute faster than my best five-mile time in college, and D1 athletes on average are at least another 30 seconds to a minute faster than that. But little Luther College did do quite well against bigger schools on many occasions. We always enjoyed running against top-level competition.

A few examples from four years of racing bigger colleges and universities:

We placed third behind Iowa State (43) and the University of South Dakota (73) at the Iowa State Invite in 1976. That day, we beat Central Missouri, Drake University, Western Illinois, UNI, and the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

At Carthage that same season, we defeated the UW-Milwaukee Track Club led by ex-LaCrosse stud Jim Drews, and also beat UW-Stevens Point, and Northwestern. And while we got thumped by the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse a week later in a meet led by Jim and Joe Hanson, we improved to the level that we beat LaCrosse in the next two years. I loved that Luther-LaCrosse rivalry and had many of my best races against the men in maroon because I respected their program so much.

I also got to race against the LaCrosse boys many times post-collegiately, including a half-marathon in their home city. They threw one helluva party after.

The point here is that while elite runners are something of a unique breed, their talents are not entirely exclusive when it comes to rcing. That’s something I’ve always appreciated about running as a sport. Even if you’re among the sub-elite of the sport, it is still possible to line up with the best and give it your all. Plus, when you’re a spectator watching the elites slug it out, there is an appreciation of what it means to race that fast. Come success or something less, there is a commonality in that knowledge.

Posted in 10K, Christopher Cudworth, college, competition, cross country, running | Tagged Alberto Salazar, bruce bickford, dan henderson, Division 1, Division III cross country, Jim Spivey, ken martin, oregon ducks, runners, running, steve plascencia | Leave a comment

50 Years of Running: National Ambitions

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

Manager Chuck Kemp, Rob Serres, Dani FJelstad, Steve (Duke) Corson, Chris Cudworth, Tim Smith, Paul Mullen, Joel Redman and Coach Kent Finanger.

The first time our Luther cross country team traveled to the national cross country meet, we flew to Boston, Massachusetts and finished in 20th place with 441 points. North Central College, led by its perennial All-American Bruce Fischer in 4th place, won the meet with 91 points over Occidental in second with 111.

The next two years we finished 13th and 8th, respectively. Our hopes of earning a trophy in 1978 hung on the performance of a pair of freshman, Tim Smith, and Rob Serres, along with seniors Dani Fjelstad, Paul Mullen, Steve Corson, Chris Cudworth, and sophomore Joel Redman.

We’d hoped that our top runner from the previous year, Keith Ellingson, would return to top form by season’s end, but his back injury kept him from running like the Elly that had won our conference meet the year before and led us to eighth at Nationals the previous year.

Our performance at Regionals left us in fifth place behind four other Midwestern teams, so we were staring at an uphill battle to improve on that against all the other teams in the nation as well. Earlier in the season, we’d run a four-mile race on the Credit Island Augustana course where the national meet was held, and I’d covered that distance in 20:26 in fifth place overall against UNI, Augustana, and Northeast Missouri. While still rounding into shape in the first meet of the season, our team only had a spread of one minute between us.

The course was flat and fast. That much we knew. There was nothing to do but show up and run as hard and fast as we could.

The night before the race, we were joined at the dinner table by a couple close rivals from Central College. One was their top runner, Jerry Fitzsimmons. After his insulting speech in the wake of his win at the conference meet, we weren’t too keen on his presence, but it proved to be harmless. In fact, it proved to be a bit hilarious.

During the pizza dinner, a couple of pitchers of beer showed up. Apparently, that was not something to which our somewhat quiet competitor was accustomed. That left it to our lead fun-maker Duke Corson to make an impression. He grabbed the pitcher by the handle and chugged down a few large gulps of beer. We all ate hardy and even stopped for a touch of ice cream after the meal.

The weather broke cool and clear after several rainy, cold days in mid-November. By race time at noon on November 18, 1978, the temps outside were fifty degrees under sunny skies. So eager was I to start the race that I actually false-started. The entire field had to pop back into place before the gun went off. Then it was off to the races for sure. Dan Henderson led through the first mile in a reported 4:23 mile. Behind him, Mike Becraft and Jeff Milliman of North Central tried to keep pace. But it was no use. Henderson buzzed to a 23:54 victory while his nearest individual rival was 24:12.

That’s fast stuff for Division III runners. But it was an exceptional talent year and 31 guys finished under the 25:00 mark for 8k. The last All-American slot in 25th place was Jeff Lauber of Tri-State in 24:46. If all of us had been running six miles like the Division 1 distance, those times would have equated to the low 30s for six miles. Not bad.

After washing his pizza down with beer at dinner the night before, Steve Corson led our Luther contingent with a time of 24:59. Dani Fjelstad ran 25:05, Rob Serres 25:08, Tim Smith 25:12, and I finished as our fifth man in 25:16, my best time ever for 8k/five miles to that point in a running career. Only seventeen seconds separated our top five guys at the national meet, yet I was 62nd overall, a full 29 places behind our top finisher Corson. That’s how many guys packed into seventeen seconds.

During the race, I felt that sense of urgency and ran the tightest tangents I possibly could on the looping course. With 200 meters to go, an other-worldly sensation came over me. I somehow knew that I had to pass people and could afford to let no one pass me. I finished tied with Jack Cruse of Glassboro State yet somehow wound up one slot down from him. Tim Smith was tied with Joe Dotson of Rust University in 25:12, yet somehow wound up one slot down from him. Serres wound up tied with two runners as Rogers of Wartburg and a Humboldt State runner, who both ran 25:08 as well, yet Serres was listed below them. Even our sixth and event runners Paul Mullen and Joel Redman had run fast times of 25:22 and 26:01. But the flow of runners was so thick it was impossible to tell how any team had done. The only thing that Kent and our fans saw was that we had finished in a compressed group, one after the other.

In fact, our team had run as a pack through four miles, passing that marker in 20:15. We’d all run faster through that stage of the race than most of us had run in the four-mile race all season. What remained was to “gut it out” the last mile. 17 total seconds was all that separated us at the end.

There was not a second to spare among any of us. I’d never felt such pressure and joy in racing all at once. When it was over, we walked over to our camp, gave tired handshakes, and hung out while scores were being compiled. I threw on my Frank Shorter warmup jacket to keep warm and looked around at the guys. What a season it had been. Now we had to wait for the verdict.

Our fans and parents slapped us on the back. We picked up our gear from our loyal and competent trainer Chuck Kemp, who had seen us through every inch of every meet. We also watched Kent Finanger tally stats on his arns written in marker trying to figure out how the Luther Norse had performed at this penultimate national meet.

Tim Smith, Joel Redman, Rob Serres, Chris Cudworth (front row) Dani Fjelstad, Steve (Duke) Corson, Paul Mullen, Kent Finanger.

We waited anxiously. What was the result? Kent added up our points in the team category minus the individual runners: Steve, 20, Dani, 24, Rob, 29, Tim, 35, Chris, 42. That totaled 151 points. How would that hold up against the other five teams in our Regional? Had we passed any of them?

Finally, the awards ceremony was called and teams gathered around in bunches waiting to hear how it all worked out. We knew that the winner was obvious. North Central had scored a mere 60 points to win yet another title. What a program!

Then it was time to award the big silver trophy for second place. It was announced: In SECOND PLACE, LUTHER COLLEGE!

We all went nuts. From our squeaky close fifth place at regionals, we’d ascended to second place at nationals. Finally, we’d earned a place as team All-Americans.

The story got even more interesting from there. While we knew the race was close, we had no idea how close it actually was. Behind our 151 points was St. Thomas with 152. Fourth was Humboldt with 158, and fifth was St. Olaf with 209. That meant four out of the top five teams at nationals came from the Midwest Regional. No wonder it had been so tough to advance the previous week! Carleton was the only Midwest team that had an off day in 18th place with 435 points.

We posed for team photos after the awards ceremony. The look on Coach Kent Finanger’s face was priceless, a combination of joy and relief, I’m sure, at having pulled such a close one out. He’d built and rebuilt the team through his recruiting. Earning second place at nationals was a well-deserved reward for such a dedicated coach. His peers certainly respected him. Other coaches know what it means when your team finally comes through. Kent had served as president of the Cross Country Coaches Association the previous two years.

Cudworth, Corson and Mullen leading Jerry Fitzsimmons of Central and Rich Moore of Augie in the Luther Invitational.

Our Central rival Jerry Fitzsimmons did not run well at all that day. He would one day become an All-American runner, but perhaps he was too freaked out from watching us drink beer the night before the race to run well at Rock Island. He managed to come home in 25:42 and 116th place, but that placed him behind all but one of Luther’s top six runners.

The same held true for Matt Haugen of St. Olaf who ran 25:22 after an All-American performance the previous year. The manic pace and two-loop course may not have suited him. But on an afternoon when Dan Henderson lit up the stage, it was either run fast or get left in the cold dust of November.

The truth is that Luther runners did not leave their race at the qualifying meet. We’d taken a risk and run through the race that week to some degree. It could have cost us dearly if we’d failed to advance, but we turned around and peaked on the right day. A seventeen-second spread between 1-5 is some seriously smart running. Coach Finanger noted that we’d bested 20 runners that were ahead of us at Qualifying. That’s how we jumped from fifth at regionals to second at nationals.

In a meet summary written for the Luther College Chips that week, I quoted one of St. Olaf’s runners who talked to us after the meet, “You guys really surprised us. We thought you were done after your finish at Central (Regionals.)”

I wrote in my journal that weekend. “It was extraordinary. We prepared, we planned and held back some. I knew we were better than we had run, and we did. God, thank you for allowing us to do our best. I am beginning to understand.”

Coach Finanger wrote us a long mimeographed message following the race: “This is one of the greatest accomplishments by a team in the History of Luther Athletics. Congratulations to the men who ran and the men who trained as our team all year. Twenty-seven men are members of the 1978 NCAA Division III Second Place Cross Country Team. I tip my hat to each and every one of you because I now know you are the ‘BEST’ in the history of Luther College Cross Country. All season long you have struggled to attain that–all season long with its ups, injuries, illnesses, downs, psychs, races, school courses, roommates, girlfriends, parties, practices, opponents, schedule, workouts, trainers, laundry, meet uniforms…you have always listened, practiced and trained and raced to be the BEST.”

He also wrote: “I have always believed and been taught that it is far better to GIVE than to RECEIVE and I thank with all my heart my Mother and Father, Brother and Sister for developing within me that beginning of a Philosophy of Life and Philosophy of Working with Others. Yesterday we GAVE and that giving was really over four weeks.” Indeed it was. Coach Kent poured his heart into everything we did.

Thinking back, one must take into account the sacrifices and time that a coach puts into every season. It’s not easy guiding a pack of 27 men and 14 women through a college cross country season. Hours are spent mapping workouts, holding team meetings, driving around to monitor the “horses” during long workouts, and then traveling back and forth to meets. All of that requires enormous time and dedication. The only real concession Kent asked was that we let him listen to radio broadcasts of college football on the way back from our Saturday meets. He’d been a top athlete in football and basketball during his own career, and loved the theater of sports as a whole.

On top of all that, Kent taught classes at Luther and raised a family. From a fully adult perspective, I now better understand why he was motivated to kick our asses late in the season when a few of us started talking about ‘burnout’. He didn’t want us to fritter away a legitimate opportunity to achieve something big. Thank God we listened to him and did not waste that chance.

Kent Finanger (right) with his late wife Lucia, son Danny and daughter Sarah. His oldest son Mark ran cross country at Luther and son Philip played baseball and basketball, the other sport Finanger coached. Lucia was the stalwart wife behind Kent. Unfortunately, she passed away from cancer. That was a life circumstance that two of his runners from the 1978 team would also share, as Keith Ellingson and Chris Cudworth both lost wives to ovarian cancer.

The best finish prior to the 1978 season was a Luther team that finished fourth in 1972. That was no small accomplishment either. But on the way back from Rock Island that day in 1978, Kent stopped the lead car, got out on the side of the road, raised his arms in the air, and yelled, “Second in the Nation!” We all joined in.

In an assembly held in the gymnasium a week later, we presented the trophy to the student body, I gave a speech that concluded with, “November 18th was a historic day for Luther College. It may or may not be a long time before a cross country team takes second in the nation, but the special thrill of an unexpected success is the satisfaction I feel and share with you tonight.”

Luther College would win a national cross country championship in 1985. Kudos to that crew of guys who accomplished that win. I’ve gotten to know many of them through reunions and such. They were as crazy as us, and their win was just as “unexpected,” in a way, but not really. The bonds of brother and sisterhood carry us to many places that we do not expect to go.

What I also recall in the wake of the race that day in November of 1978 was walking over to my father and mother. My dad and I had a sometimes tempestuous and confusing relationship, but it was he that directed me into running in the first place. While I hadn’t been a true team leader those first three years at Luther, I stepped up and provided leadership that final season.

Posing with my folks Emily and Stewart Cuworth in the Finanger home during a celebratory meal with all our parents.

He knew that. So I hugged him and told him something I had not perhaps said in many years. “I love you, dad.” My mother smiled that big smile she always had when she was proud of one of her boys.

It felt good to make them both proud as well.

Dani Fjelstad with his parents. Dani recently retired after a successful accounting and management career.

Paul Mullen with his parents. Successful in business, Paul Mullen now works in Luther College Development.

Steve (Duke) Corson with his parents. Steve later took over his father’s funeral home business.

Keith Ellingson and parents. We lost Keith in 2021 to a series of health issues including Parkinson’s, Lewy-Body Dementia and a heart condition. A year before, Keith was inducted into the Simpson College Hall of Fame after a coaching career in which he led more than 60 track and cross country athletes to All-American status. He was my freshman year roommate.

Posted in 10K, Christopher Cudworth, college, competition, cross country, mental health, running | Tagged Augustana College, carleton college, Kent Finanger, Luther college cross country, luther college decorah Iowa, NCAA Division III, North Central College, regional cross country, Rock Island Illinois, st olaf college, wow fun wow | Leave a comment

	Jim Nielsen on Marty Supreme and Me
	Warren on Marty Supreme and Me
	Christopher Cudworth on Marty Supreme and Me
	John Enright on Marty Supreme and Me
	Christopher Cudworth on A November 18 to remember

We Run and Ride

50 Years of Running: Road Trippin’

50 Years of Running: What a fool believes

50 Years of Running: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

50 Years of Running: Snake Eyes

50 Years of Running: Graduation Blues

50 Years of Running: On the Runway to Life

50 Years of Running: Wonder Left

50 Years of Running: Alternative Realities

50 Years of Running: How the Big Boys Do It

Division III runners at the Division I meet

50 Years of Running: National Ambitions

Follow Blog via Email

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Follow me on Twitter

Leave a comment!

Christopher Cudworth Fan Page

Follow Blog via Email

Blogs I Follow