Cessna Stadium is a hulking concrete and steel structure that has towered over the Wichita State University campus for decades. The Cessna Aircraft Company, based in Wichita, provided some funding for construction, thus the name. The stadium was home to the WSU Shockers football team throughout its history, dating back to 1946. The football team weathered a tragedy in 1970 when 14 members died in a plane crash near Loveland Pass in Colorado on their way to play a game against Utah State. The football program was discontinued in 1986 due to funding issues.
The stadium has remained the home of WSU’s Track and Field program, and also the KT Woodman Classic, a high school and junior college meet. We arrived to find the stadium partially demolished during its conversion to a track-specific venue that would be renamed University Stadium. In fact, the bleachers on the east side had already been razed.
The KT Woodman included high school events throughout the day, followed by college events in the late afternoon and on into the evening. Harrison’s 10K was scheduled for a 10 p.m. start.
10 p.m.
People should be in bed asleep at that hour.
In all my years of coaching, I’d never had to prepare Harrison or any of my runners for such a late event, particularly an event of this distance. The only thing even close was an afternoon/evening track meet in Alamosa that ran late because of a glitch with timing equipment. Harrison and his teammate Micah had ended up running the 3200 meters at around 9 p.m. In that situation, because we had no forewarning or choice, we just went with what was and hoped for the best.
The biggest question was nutrition — what to eat and when. We had the routine down pretty well for daytime races. It was fish, vegetables and rice for dinner the night before, then oatmeal with butter and cream for breakfast a few hours out. Water until the start. This was something I had fine-tuned through a lot of trial and error with Harrison over the years of running distance events.
With a race starting so late, I felt like he could have a normal breakfast, but would need to eat something substantial for lunch. This left several hours until the race. The only thing that made sense was to have fish for lunch, then oatmeal for dinner.
I also wanted Harrison to get some movement while staying off his feet as much as possible.
That morning, after an outburst involving burnt toast in the hotel dining room, we drove over to Wichita State University to check out the stadium and go for a shake-out run on campus. Afterward, we found a restaurant to get Harrison lunch, then hung out at the hotel until it was time to watch teammates run in shorter events. Brooklyn put on a gutsy performance in the 800 meters, out-sprinting another woman at the finish line for a school record. Darren had wisely put Nate in the 1500 — and he also ran a school record for that distance.
We returned to the hotel for Harrison to eat his oatmeal dinner and rest before returning to the stadium. I took him out for a quick warm-up run in the dark on the campus. I prayed neither one of us would trip on a curb or a sidewalk crack. I was anxious and still not feeling well. Harrison had been very sick just three days ago, had a big disruption to his routine, was having anxiety-induced behavioral issues, plus the travel, weird mealtimes, a 10 p.m. start time, and a stacked field. It was a lot. And did we forget he also has autism?
At last it was time for the race. It was 70 degrees with a light breeze. The refs lined up the 29 men entered in the 10K. Despite the late hour, the intensity seemed to be building. I could see Harrison in the crowd because he was bouncing up and down as he often does when excited for a race. The ref called the runners to the line and quickly a shot rang out in the darkness. The smoke from the pistol curled in the stadium lights as the swarming crowd of flying arms and legs headed for the first curve. The finish line was 25 laps, or 6.2 miles, away.
There is really nothing quite like that many guys sprinting to the cut-in ahead of the others. This is always a point of anxiety for me with Harrison because of his open-gait style of running and his height. At 6’2” and mostly legs, there’s plenty of opportunity to get tangled with another runner.
Harrison’s teammates and Mary had come out onto the field to cheer him on. He went out hotter than usual. We had no idea what to expect on a low-altitude track, but this felt more like his 5K pace. The track was not especially well-lighted, and the backside seemed even darker. After the first few laps Darren was pleased with the split times, but clearly Harrison was starting to slow down and losing places.
At the halfway point, he was still on track for a personal record. However, I could see the strain starting to build in his entire body. His face was flushed, something I’d never seen before. Clearly, the week’s struggles were now piling up on the track. At times it seemed he was running in a trance with his eyes closed. Still, he soldiered on with his teammates cheering him trackside. Twelve laps to go. Darren told me I needed to tell him to speed up, so I ran up-track to give him that message. He picked up his pace.
In the final laps he got lapped by some of the faster runners. He tried hanging with these runners for a while, which helped him gain on the clock. In the last lap he finished with a kick that left a runner from Oklahoma Panhandle State University behind. In the end, Harrison had beaten his own school record for the 10K by two minutes, running 36:10. While this was not a spectacular time in the wide world of competitive running — where there’s always someone who is faster — it would stand as Harrison’s greatest track accomplishment and solidify his standing in the CMC record books.
We’ll never know what Harrison might have run if he’d not had a week of illness and chaos. I was just relieved that he had managed to run the race without any mishaps.
We all stayed on the field to cheer on Zoe in the 5K. She also ran a school record. It had been a late night, and now at midnight we needed to find Harrison and Zoe something to eat. We would be driving back to Colorado early the next morning.
Notes from The Blur
The morning of the meet, the team got breakfast in the lobby. I was confused about what to eat. I eventually chose toast, eggs, and oatmeal. Since I noticed Zoe had burned her toast, I turned the knob down, hoping the same thing wouldn’t happen to me. However, I started the toaster and my toast was burned as well. I ran toward the elevator, then took it to the highest floor, Floor 7. I stayed there until I was able to calm down before returning to the cafeteria.
After breakfast we left the hotel to do a preview run near the stadium. During the run, I noticed a skywalk between the basketball arena and the track stadium. I was curious about how to get inside that structure. So after the run, I found a door that led into the building. However, I was still a good distance from the skywalk. I went farther down the hallway only to realize this area was fenced off. So, I took an elevator hoping to find a way into to the skywalk. That’s when my dad asked a security guard. The security guy said, “If I let you do it, I’ll have to let 25,000 people do it!” We later found out the skywalk was closed off for the meet. I was able to handle this okay.
Following our run, Darren took everyone to a Dillon’s grocery store, which is like King Soopers back in Colorado. Most of my teammates got Gatorades. I mainly stayed with my teammates inside the store, but became upset at times and even leaned my head against the wall once again to hide.
My teammates were going to a fast-food restaurant, but my parents wanted me to eat better before the race. This made me upset because I wanted to eat with the team. My mom and dad were consciously doing this so I could eat well before my big race. I understood this, but I still felt like I was being treated differently. We went to an Olive Garden and I ordered the fish. They also had bread, and I was tempted to eat it.
When we got back to the hotel room, I read an email from Darren, and one of the things on his list was to watch a movie. I thought he meant that he was going to take the whole team to watch a movie together at a theater like we did before the state meet in high school. What he meant was to watch a movie in the room to relax. When I learned that this wasn’t the case, I got mad because I wanted to watch a movie with the team. Nevertheless, I pretty much stayed in the room until it was time to see Brooklyn, Ayslynn, and Briceida run the 800. We drove back to the track and sat in the bleachers waiting for the 800. However, I had noticed this elevator on the other side of the bleachers and was curious about its speed. So, I let my mom and dad know where I was going and then ran to the elevator. I then pushed the button and waited for the doors to open. Nothing happened.
At this point I thought that the elevator might have been turned off. So I went down to check the elevator from the first floor. And sure enough, the elevator was stuck on the first floor with the doors open. I went inside and tried pressing the up button. Still, it didn’t do anything.
When my mom came to check on me. She told me not to push the buttons inside the elevator because she was worried about me getting stuck inside. I then gave up and went back to the bleachers.
When the 800 was about to start, I wished Brooklyn good luck and she gave me a thumbs-up sign. When the race started, Brooklyn passed several women and took the lead in the first 200 meters. She stayed out front for the rest of the lap. As she came by for the first lap, I said, “Let’s go, Brooklyn!! You’re in first place right now! Your hair’s on fire!! Let’s go, let’s go! Don’t let anyone catch you!!” Then, I yelled again, “Stay in first place! Your hair’s on gosh darn fire here!!”
In the 2nd lap, one of the other women passed. Brooklyn then spent the last 100 meters fighting for that spot and ended up finishing just ahead of the other woman. This was the most epic moment I’ve ever seen during a track meet. All three CMC women ended up running PRs.
However, not everything was epic. Right after Brooklyn finished, I attempted to rush down to the track in hopes of congratulating her on her great race. However, I couldn’t find a way onto the track. I kept going in and out of tunnels, hoping to get on the track. Each was fenced off at the end. The women had already gone for a cool-down. I was really upset that I missed my chance to congratulate them. I realized I was having another “should statement” moment. This persisted as we drove back to the hotel to pick up Zoe and then back to the track.
I was still angry when we returned to the stadium. I started to get ready for my race and tried to forget about what had happened earlier. It was then that I noticed an open gate that led to the track. I thought to myself that I had messed up and should’ve gone down there when I had the chance. I realized then I couldn’t go back in time to make that happen. Anyway, I tried my best to move on and not let it interfere with getting ready to race.
I needed to find the bathroom. When I walked away from the track, something unexpected happened. The rest of the team came back from eating. They seemed all excited for me and mobbed me with praise. I was taken by surprise. Also, I was finally able to congratulate Brooklyn on the race. I felt relieved that everything worked out in the end. I was excited to run in the dark but unsure how I would perform since I was still recovering physically from my illness.
From the gun I went out fairly smoothly. This continued for the next several laps. My mom, Nate and Brooklyn ran all over the place cheering me on, which made me run faster towards the end of the race. I then pushed myself through the last several yards to the finish, where Darren told me the news that I ‘d run a school record in the 10K. Nate and Brooklyn came over and congratulated me on this accomplishment.
Next up was Zoe’s 5k. I ran back and forth on the field, cheering her on. Then, right before she crossed the finish line, I turned my head away because I thought she was going to puke. I learned later that she actually did throw up, but she did this away from my view.
My dad, Zoe, and I went on a cool-down run. We were hungry. It was now really late, and the only thing we could find open in Wichita was a McDonald’s. My dad was not thrilled about this, but Zoe said she loves McDonald’s. Only the drive-through was open, so we ate in the car on the way back to the hotel.
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