“Running … is like getting up every morning and shooting yourself. You know that you are going to put yourself through something really painful, but you also know how much strength and speed are going to come with it. The passion of the runner is to force forgetfulness on that pain and embrace the benefits that will without fail make you a better person.” –Adam Batliner, former Colorado Buffalo
The metaphor is a little sloppy, but the sentiment is undeniable. Running sucks. People who don’t run know this, and people who do run know it on a much deeper level. So why do we do it?
For Adam Batliner and the rest of the men’s cross country team at the University of Colorado, the 1998 season began with one answer to that question. For many, it ended with a different one. The story of that transformation—and that of standout runner Adam Goucher’s star-crossed pursuit of an elusive NCAA title—makes up the meat and potatoes of Chris Lear’s “Running with the Buffaloes,” a book that combines an intimate look at the most solitary sport there is with a heartbreaking (and heart-filling) account of what it means to be a team.
I don’t think this is the story Lear envisioned when he moved to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains two decades ago to spend a season with the Buffaloes. In some ways, sure: It offers some real insight into the psyche of Goucher, who at the time seemed like he might become the next great American distance runner, and it presents a delightful look into the life and brain of Mark Wetmore, Colorado’s coach and a man who’s now widely regarded as a legend in the sport. From breakdowns of training theory to a glimpse into Goucher’s mindset on race day, there’s plenty here for the real running nerd.
But “Running with the Buffaloes” gains its emotional juice from a mid-season event that Lear couldn’t possibly have predicted, one that has very little to do with winning and losing. The way Goucher and his teammates respond is what forms the heart of the narrative. Running is a sport of perseverance, of overcoming pain—and the pain isn’t always sore muscles.
Lear’s author bio describes him as “New Jersey’s fastest high-school miler of the 1990s”. His expertise is key to the book’s success. He captures the sport’s frustrations, fears and elations, the never-ending injuries and the daily grind of pounding pavement. It’s impossible to know for sure, but you get the feeling that Wetmore and Goucher wouldn’t have opened up so easily to someone who didn’t understand their passion. Several scenes in the book detail conversations or events that transpired on, say, a fifteen-mile training run. While asking questions after the fact is nice, for a journalist, there’s nothing quite like being there yourself.
A book like this makes me existentially uneasy. I see these people as they were on the page, futures limitless and open—and then I remember 20 years have passed. I can find out what happened. I can learn that injuries derailed Adam Goucher’s career, and that now his wife is the most accomplished distance runner in the family. I can learn former walk-on Mike Friedberg became a track coach at Washington State. I can learn that Mark Wetmore is now in his third decade at Colorado, where 2016 Olympic medalists Jenny Simpson and Emma Coburn were among his later pupils.
I kind of wish I hadn’t learned all that. I kind of wish that, in my mind, Adam Goucher were still frozen in time, racing across a stretch of grass in Kansas toward one final finish line. And I definitely wish his teammates—all of them—were still there to cheer him on. It was good to meet them.
Read it if: You’re a runner, or you’re a sucker for the “a season with the team” genre.
Skip it if: You’re uninterested in cross-country races from a prior millennium.