Ah, Schanz. You know him. The guy after whom we named our
excellent fartlek workout; the guy who is never at a loss for words. The guy
who never, ever, ever, stops talking. Rumor has it, he even talks in his sleep.
A lot. Three days of non-stop words. What was I thinking? Schanz talks about
everything: Politics. Sports. Track. His student-teaching placements. His
future career aspirations. Track. Shaker. Section 2 track. Shaker. Track. His
running. His training. His racing. His teammates’ running. His teammates’
racing. What’s your XC schedule like
next year? (Even though he is graduating and will be gone from our ranks!) Track.
Shaker. WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Shaker. Track. Some lame-brained,
“distance 4x400 relay” at the end of Saturday’s meet. You name it, Schanz is
never at a loss for words. Wait! That last one. The relay. It dominated the
conversation at the meet last night; at dinner; at breakfast; at the meet
today. Enough! I’m trying to coach a team already.
Ah. But we got the last laugh. Check out his “split” from
that lame-brained 4x400 relay of his. Yeah. Pretty slow. Looked even worse in
person. One of his classmates, housemates and teammates (I will not divulge his
complete identity here, but his first name rhymes with “Patt” and his last name
is spelled “Panebianco”) described it this way: “I’ve never seen anyone so slow
on a relay.” Oh, it was slow, baby. And it was fun. His teammates lined every
inch of the track down there, cheering him on and most likely poking a little fun at
him.
However, in fairness to Schanz (and really, he does not
deserve fairness, but I’m that kind of guy), you should know what preceded his
stellar 60.5-second anchor leg (And please. Take the word “anchor” literally
here). For starters, our boy was part of the Marist mob scene in the men’s
5,000-meter run on Friday night (you may have noticed that we had 11 finishers
in that distance race!). Schanz pointed out to me that it was his first outdoor
track race in nearly two years. There was a break in the noise last spring as
he studied abroad. Clearly, there was a lot of rust to shake off, but Schanz
raced hard and raced well. He has been student teaching and his training has suffered
as a result. I will be serious now and point out that, all things considered,
Schanz gets everything out of himself in these races and promises a huge
improvement the next time out, in a few weeks.
Then, today, as instructed by his coach, he went out for the
usual 15-mile long run. From what I hear from his loyal teammates who pounded
the pavement with him for more than an hour and a half, Schanz was spewing out
a blue streak of complaints every step of the way. Vintage Schanz. Afterwards,
like any good distance runner, he needed some replenishing. So he and his
teammates ventured to the University of Richmond Cafeteria, which apparently is
the Best Cafeteria in the World. Everybody raved about it. Most notably, Schanz
did NOT complain about it, which surely speaks volumes of its qualities. So
yeah: A hard race, a long run, a big lunch. Pretty difficult prelude to a hard
anchor leg (remember: take “anchor” literally!). More words than you can
imagine (I think it’s fitting that this post is ridiculously long, and interjected
with several parenthetical side notes … like this … it’s a little snapshot of a
three-day weekend with Schanz). It was all in good fun, and we all got our work
in, for the first meet of the outdoor season.
Schanz pointed out that there are 57 days till he graduates.
Some teammates may be counting the hours along with the days, and there are times when we would
like him to just, you know, tone it down – and quiet down -- a little. But
there is no doubting his loyalty to our program. And who knows? There may be a
quiet moment at a meet in the future where maybe, just maybe, we will miss
Schanz. It’s possible. But not likely!
