Part I: New Kid on the Block
Jeff whispers
“rookie” in my ear as he laps me yet again. Heidi hollers “fresh meat” in my
direction. Coach Gary often refers to my need for training wheels… I guess it’s
all a part of my introduction to Team Furman Elite. Of course, as the newest member
to Furman Elite, the responsibility of commencing our weekly blog segments has
also fallen to me. Once a week, you’ll be presented with a new blog from a
different FU Elite runner, therefore being given the chance to get to know each
of us and our program a little more intimately. By that math, every 6 weeks, I
get to enlighten you on the idiosyncrasies of Furman Elite from a perspective
unique only to a boy, aged 25, raised in Chapel Hill, NC, schooled in Madison,
WI and returned south to Greenville on a quest to reach my athletic potential
and help build a program fully integrated into the community and on its way to
national recognition.
I admit, I
have attempted blogging in the past, though I seem to have trouble drawing a
line between a blog post and a 20th century historical novel. With
hours left before the publication of this, FU Elite’s first ever blog post,
I’ll try to keep things tight. These posts will be somewhat of an ongoing
narration meant to answer those persistent questions: who is the man behind
that pretty face you see on the FU website? What is Furman Elite? What the hell
is 1500 meters? Wait, you don’t do marathons? And so forth.
Before arriving in G-Ville, I was a
helpless soul wandering the streets of Washington
DC Madison for a year, and then absent-mindedly
(and with no regrets) followed a girl to DC. It was there, about 5 months into
my stay, that FU Elite’s Jeff See, who I had mopped the track with year in,
year out during our collegiate careers, reached out to me from afar, desperate
to be my fulltime caddy and training buddy. He invited me to bring my talents,
specifically those pertaining to running and oil wrestling, down to Greenville to join Furman
Elite. Torn as I was between returning to Madison
and making the move to Greenville ,
the nearly two months spent here at Furman have confirmed without a doubt that
my choice to migrate south was the right one.
Let me try to paint a succinct, objective
picture of Furman Elite. 4 guys, 2 girls, 1 track. Spend way too many of the
waking hours together, meeting every morning at 8:30 and every evening after
the completion of the day’s TRL re-run. It’s a schedule that nears on job-like,
though I guess the difference here being we take advantage of the
implementation of “nap-time,” midday, erry day. It’s all in the job description. Four of the
members have our competitive focus on the 1500m, aka the Metric Mile, aka the
perfect distance for a race, aka you probably still couldn’t tell me how many
laps around a track that is. Meanwhile the remaining two have gone the route of
the horse… steeplechase that is. I’ll let one of them explain because they lost
me at the words “water” and “jump.” The majority of our miles are recorded
around campus, including on the university golf course, where the idea of
seeing shirtless men jogging in short-shorts sends the management into a
frenzied panic resulting in golf ball welts in the shape of FU on our backs.
Furman is tucked into the foothills of Northwest SC within a 30 minute drive of
the NC border and a couple of different soft-surface running spots for our
longer mileage days.
So how about Greenville ? 5 miles of stripmalls span the
distance between Furman and the big city which has made a point to allocate
real estate for each and every chain store east of the Mississippi
and south of Canada .
Downtown is actually quite quaint, complete with a Main St , a bumpin’ public park at its
center, and enough barbeque restaurants to compete with Furman’s very own
Dining Hall, an experience that deserves an entirely separate blogpost. The
Swamp Rabbit bike path connects Furman to downtown as well as shoots north,
dropping recreational cyclists such as myself and George Hincapie off on
winding roads through the calm and contemplative country side.
As you read more of my blogs going
forward, you’ll find that my voice may sometimes be serious, sometimes
sarcastic, and more often then not, exhibiting poor attempts at humor. I think
I should make clear now my commitment to Furman Elite and my excitement to grow
with the program as we pursue our respective dreams. (Still waiting on a
nickname before I’m officially FU Elite, though) I know you will all wait eagerly
for the passing of another 6 weeks until that time when I will grace you with
another post chronicling the ongoing adventures of Furman Elite.
*the overall blog title is a work in progress, so bear with me...
**for a tedious and more in-depth look into my troubled past, check out my first attempts at blogging at the link here: http://jackbolas.wordpress.com/
