Thank you. I have actually given thought to two subjects. The first growing up in my family with stories and some detail of the influence of our high school and U of O teams on us. The other subject is that after the death of each brother my teams rallied and won state titles. That would be told from the point of view of the benefit of a team in times of trouble.
I ran on teams with Centrowitz, Talyor, Williams, Chapa, Clary, Bill, Salazar,Spir and many other great athletes and guys. A story about how Eugene and the US college scene handled the infussion of older Kenyan runners would also be worth telling. It was a confusing time and there are some interesting stories of our meetings with WSU.
The team that you mention was after I left the season.
During a summer job my junior year I was delivering roofing materials. I did a job called running ridge (I carried packages of roofing to the peak of the ridge). I fell through our conveyor while it was still running and wrenched my knee pretty badly. Soon after that I was hit on my bike going to work and injured my ribs. I was taken out of running for a while and did not return until a few years out of school. I did spend a good amount of time being Clary's teammate. Clary was one tough dude. We used to call him "Tank". I would joke with him that he did not need to hurdle the steeple barrier as he could just run through them and clear a path for the rest of us. At the end of one team party, Clary took on about 4 of us and threw us around like a rag dolls. I was a very successful wrestler myself, but Clary took strength to another level. He also has a very dry sense of humor that was very entertaining at times.
I did not get to know Jim Hill that well. I do remember when he was just starting his bussiness. He was very exctied about this new kind of sweat pant and he was showing them off to anyone who would listen. Who knew? He has earned everything that he has made for himself.
I got to know Ken Martin more through Bill than from running. He is a very warm and fun loving guy. I enjoyed being around Martin a lot.
Sometime I would like to tell the story of what went into Bill making that Olympic team. It is incredible. He had a bit a a cronic situation in his achilles tendon due to a kid jumping on it in gym class in high school. Since that day it would flair up regardless of the training he did and he was not eager for surgery. He was actually very inventive with his training and just had a weakened body part. He took cross training to a new level in order to make the 80 team.
When he was getting ready for the NCAA in Houston he would take an excercise bike into the sauna and work at a pace that would kill most of us in normal conditions for about an hour. Then he would run. Of course everyone from the training room staff had to ask him why he was doing all of this. He would explain that he was getting ready for running in the heat. After a while people would peek into the window to see if Bill was really working that hard in there. It became a U of O training room legend.