You Don't Know... Bolas

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 20^th 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, anxiously trying to find myself, but really just trying to find consistent training partners and a coach. After graduating from UW-Madison nearly 3 years ago (wow I’m old), I worked my way around the world a bit, wound back up in 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/