The Middle Distance Runner
New GRP Runner Mitchell Black (#8 above) racing in the Texas Qualifier in February. Mitchell is currently training to qualify for the 800 meters at the US Olympic Track Trials in June. Photo credit: Johnny Zhang
Photo credit: Johnny Zhang
Meet GRP Runner Mitchell Black
PRs: 800m - 1:48.03, 1500m - 3:47.29
4x NCAA DIII 800m Champion, 10x All American, 12th Place USATF Indoor Nationals 2018, Awarded the 2016 NCAA Walter Byers Scholarship for achievements as a student-athlete
Focusing on the 800m, training for the US Olympic Trials
PhD Candidate in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, where I work in Professor Dimitra Panagou’s Distributed Aerospace Systems and Control Lab and focus on Safety-Critical Control under Uncertainty.
“To me the GRP represents a unique blend of training and lifestyle support. I look forward to the many learning opportunities ahead as I get to know new teammates, coaches, and the Craftsbury community, and work with them in unison to break running barriers and do good in our communities.”
From GRP Runner Mitchell Black
“I’ll only ever be a middle distance runner.”
Drums beating softly, dependably in the background, these words are perhaps spoken rather than sung in the band Sea Wolf’s eponym to this piece. As far as I can tell, Alex Brown Church, the vocal lead, has not trained in the art of middle distance running for any considerable amount of time, but as a Mid-D enthusiast myself I believe he struck a chord in this line. And I don’t mean C major.
In athletics, we tend to reward superlatives. How fast can you run? Usain Bolt ignited stadiums in a flash with his speed, and his reign as fastest man in the world made him a household name. How far can you run? Entire communities turn out to line streets and city blocks in order to watch bold (read: crazy) marathoners test their bodies over a distance so long and grueling that simply covering it is a mark of success. The allure of such measures of the limits of human performance is irresistible, that much is evident.
It can be difficult, then, for the middle distance runner to understand how they fit into this framework. While I do not speak for the entire running community, I would imagine that the following hypothetical scenario, which I will here call “Escape the Bear,” has been discussed in no small number of running circles: a group of runners stumbles upon a newly-awoken Mama Grizzly hunting for her first meal post-hibernation, and the slowest member becomes said meal. In a manifestation of this scenario in which a Mid-D runner is joined by a group of sprinters, the Mid-D representative will almost assuredly fall prey to Mama G. Traversing the fast/slow-twitch gamut, we also lack the stamina required to survive a hunt-by-persistence, a technique hypothesized to have been employed by ancient hunter-gatherers against herds of more agile species, like the gazelle. We are, by definition, middling. It’s what we’ll only ever be.
Only ever be. Only? During my college days as a Tufts Jumbo I certainly wanted more. If what I felt wasn’t envy for my long-distance teammates, I at the very least idolized them. On Sundays post long run, after most of us had eaten our way through waffles, fruit bowls, yogurt, and the like, our long-distance brethren would arrive heroically at their seats at the table to share tales from their travels. Just the day before, the rest of us had watched them grit and grimace through miles of racing, the pain of which had been worn unabashedly on their faces. Beyond the fact that I simply thought they were cool, it was that strength to endure that I so intensely craved yet could not muster.
There were various “failed” experiments (a 17:10 5k, for example), but in these failures I found freedom — freedom to own the runner, the teammate, the man I am, freedom which carved room for a deep love of the sport to grow, a love which at this point has propelled me to my most consistently high-quality training block ever. In this time, I grew to appreciate that we Mid-D athletes have it all. There are days where we grind through challenging tempo work, and others where we get to spike up and rip straightaways in the name of speed development. Now, as I begin a new chapter with the Green Racing Project, familiar feelings of awe surface when scanning the credentials of my new teammates, the majority of whom possess fastest-known-times (FKTs) or other accolades at distances I will never attempt. And rather than striving to emulate their training as I once would have done, I look forward to learning from their approach, their sacrifices, and their fortitude so that I might run a middling pace over a middle distance in an exceptional way.
Just as an adventurer, galvanized by wanderlust, may set out to explore new horizons only to discover that the most compelling call comes from home, I needed to test my legs over new challenges to understand that a middle distance runner is what I am and will continue to be.
I’ll be a middle distance runner, who got it better than me?