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Chris Lear and
His Impeccable
Timing
 I
remember reading "Running with the
Buffaloes" for the first time like it was
yesterday. I was in my 1st year as
head cross country coach at Somers High
School in NY and an old college teammate of
mine, Jeff Eades, had given me the paperback
version. (Jeff later married my sister and
they are expecting a baby, but that's a
whole other story) When I glanced at the
title I thought it was about running with
actual buffaloes - the animal. I
pictured something along the lines of The
Running of the Bulls in Spain every year.
Little did I know I was about to read the
best non-fiction running book ever written.
It was one of those
hot July days - very humid with no wind
what-so-ever. I remember thinking that
I should be outside doing something, but I
couldn't put the book down that day, reading
it cover to cover in a total of about 7
hours and reading it again less than a week
later in the same manner. All told I
have probably read the book over 100 times,
though most times it's a chapter here and
another there. I have to admit, it has
greatly influenced me as a coach and a
runner. I love the point in the season
when I can finally say to my athletes as
Mark Wetmore did, "The hay's in the barn."
Later in that same
summer I went to the Green Mountain Running
Camp in Lyndonville, Vermont for the first
time with my team. At this camp, there
are usually two coaches or counselors in
each group, and since it was my first year,
I was teamed up with a veteran coach - Meg
Waldron. I found out much later what
kind of runner Meg had been and the impact
she had on the Lear brothers. I also
met a guy named Tim Lear, Chris's twin
brother.
So when I heard
that Chris was doing a book signing in NYC,
I thought it would give me a chance to
finally meet him, as well as to see Tim who
I hadn't seen in 4 years. I also
wanted to have Chris sign my copy of RWTB to replace the copy that Dan Wilson had
signed years before when Chris wasn't at
camp.
How fitting I
thought it was that Chris Lear was doing a
book signing before the movie "5000m" was
being shown at the New York Running Company,
a shoe store at Columbus Circle in NYC.
Why was it fitting? Because Columbus
Circle is on the NYC Marathon course, and
when you're running the race, it's the point
where you re-enter Central Park and realize,
"Hey - I'm going to make it to the finish
line." Getting "to the finish line"
of his book (ie: getting it published) was
the basis of the first half hour of Chris
Lear's lecture.
Impeccable Timing
Chris Lear credits
much of the successes in his life to always
having impeccable timing. The first
example he gave of this was his sophomore
year in HS at the Pindry School in
Martinsville, NJ. The school had just
hired a new track coach and it was a women
by the name of Meg Waldron. Waldron
had been one of New Jersey's best ever prep
runners and is still ranked in Jack
Shepard's HS Track. She ran at the
renowned Bernards HS during the tenure of
Mark Wetmore, who of course is the
University of Colorado coach.
Waldron helped turn
Chris from a promising freshman into the
fastest New Jersey miler of the 1990's when
he ran 4:09 at the Golden West Invitational
his senior year and set the stage for him to
be All-Ivy, All-East, and All-American at
Princeton, where he was a two time cross
country captain. But ore importantly,
she told him stories about the teams that
Wetmore helped produce.
After college,
Chris was trying to find anything written on
running that was non-fiction. He kept
finding all these great books on football,
basketball, baseball - everything except
running. He obsessed over it,
complaining to friends and family about it,
the whole time slowly formulating an idea
for a book. But could he write a book
when he had never published anything before
he wrote RWTB? Nothing. Nothing
in a school newspaper or college yearbook.
He was truly a "walk-on" to the literary
world.
If this book was
ever made into a movie, I can see one of the
most important scenes so vividly: Lear meets
Wetmore in his hotel room in California to
discuss his idea of writing a non-fiction
running book. After a few months of
calling Wetmore to try and convince him to
let him follow his team around for the
entire season, Wetmore agreed.
Now here's the
classic movie scene. Chris sells
everything that won't fit is his car, quits
his job, and moves to Boulder, Colorado to
write a book. Should there be The
Allman Brothers Band playing in the
background? Or perhaps a Green Day song
would be more relevant to the times?
Either way, the story behind the book is
almost as compelling as the book itself.
After Chris
finished the book, he couldn't get in
published. He kept getting rejection
letters from publisher after publisher.
Finally, he decided to publish it himself
through a company in Canada. He
scraped together the money he needed and put
the book out. It became a cult classic
and climbed to number 400 on the Amazon best
selling list. An article in USA Today
followed and the publishers that had all
turned him away came crawling back to to eat
some crow.
Impeccable timing
again contributed to Chris's next book.
"Alan Webb: The Quest for the Fastest Mile".
It was impeccable timing that brought guys
like Nate Brannen, Kevin Sullivan, Tim Broe
and Alan Webb together at the University of
Michigan and it was Impeccable timing that
allowed Lear to be there.
I don't know what
you got out of "Alan Webb: The Quest for the
Fastest Mile", but after watching Webb
struggle in his first few years out of HS,
Lear dove the point home that Webb was an 18
year old kid. Sure, he was one of the
best runners in the US and maybe the world,
but he was still a college freshman dealing
with being away from home for the first
time. Lear's book reminded me that
there is more to developing an athlete than
his fitness and that with time, Webb would
no doubt improve in more ways than one.
Jorge Torres (who
it seems like to be called George instead of
the way I thought his names was pronounced)
also made an appearance after winning the US
8K Championships at the new Icahn Stadium at
Randall's Island. It was Jorge's first
ever road race, though he said that he
didn't plan on running too many in the near
future. Jorge gave some background
stories to the Colorado program, where he is
now an assistant coach and still coached my
Mark Wetmore. When asked to give
advice to younger runners, Torres said, "Be
Patient", something he said that Wetmore
instilled in him.
Kevin Young, the
world record holder in the 400m hurdles was
also on hand to answer the occasional
question on racing in Europe. I have
to say Mr. Young was great to talk to, and
while we discussed some things "off
the record", he proved to be a wealth of
Knowledge. With how deep the US is in
the 400m and 400m hurdles right now, I can't
help but wonder how much longer his record
will stand, especially after Kerron Clement,
who broke Michael Johnson's world indoor
400m mark at the NCAA Champs, has now said
he will concentrate on the 400m hurdles
outdoors. This year's World Champs
should be very exciting.
I did have to leave
before the showing of the movie "5000m", but
I have my DVD and will watch is soon.
When I look at how there seems to be a
distance running revival going on in the US,
at least at the HS and college levels, I
can't help but think that Chris Lear has had
at least a small part in that. We look
forward to another book down the road.
by Tim
Fulton
armorytrack.com |
