Remembering Reese: The night the lights went out at the track

Note: This is another in a series of posts in remembrance of Marist Running Alum Greg Salamone (Class of 2001), who passed away in October 2014 at the age of 35 after battling melanoma for eight months.   

In the spring of 2000, when Greg qualified for the outdoor IC4As at 10,000 meters, he was the only Marist athlete to make it to that meet. We were proud of his accomplishments to that point; he was in the middle of forging one of the best distance running careers in school history. His IC4A qualifying time stood as our 10km school record until his friend and teammate Kirk Dornton would break it a few years later; it has since been broken several other times.

Greg’s IC4A race was on a Friday night at Princeton, but it was a week after school had ended. Not wanting to stick around campus during Senior Week – Greg was the antithesis of party animal, and I am pretty certain he did not have a drop of alcohol during his four years at Marist – he went home to upstate Liverpool to complete his training and bring his belongings home for the summer. He took the Amtrak train down from Syracuse to Poughkeepsie on Thursday, the day before his IC4A race. Well, that Amtrak train is usually prone to delays. For whatever reason, the frequent delays have something to do with the fact that it originates in Canada. I have since experienced these long delays when arranging for travel with Amtrak trains heading to Poughkeepsie from the north.

Remember, this is 2000, so there was no real-time delay updates on the Internet back then. Or, if there was, I certainly wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. And if I had a cell phone, I rarely used it; I am 100 percent certain Greg did not have a cell phone. The train was supposed to arrive in Poughkeepsie in the early evening. Around 7 p.m. Greg called (either from home, or more likely from a pay phone) to say he hadn’t even left Syracuse at that time. So, it was going to be a long night.

I arrived at the train station at about 11 p.m. No Amtrak train. Still delayed, the board said. I took a nap. I woke up a little after midnight. Train still delayed. The estimated arrival time kept getting later and later, until it got earlier and earlier – the wee hours of the next day! What’s coach to do? I jogged a mile in the train station parking lot – I was a streak runner at the time, and that 12-minute jog in my khaki pants constituted the next day’s run. I went back to sleep. Still no train.

Finally, around 1:30 or 2 a.m. – who remembers the exact details 15 years later? – I was awakened by the rumbling of the train and the whistle of the Amtrak. Greg’s train arrives. I bring him to our house in Hyde Park, where his deluxe accommodations include a spot on our couch. He slept a fitful 4 or so hours, being awakened intermittently by a very noisy sump pump in our basement that would whine every 45 seconds, and then by a chatty toddler who did not know the meaning of sleeping past 6 a.m. That would be our son Joey, at the time about 9 months old, not walking, not talking, still in diapers, still using a binky. That 9-month-old baby is now taller than me, a sophomore in high school, an honors student starting to research colleges.

Greg was a good sport about it all. He got up and had breakfast with us. Joey was in his high chair, having vegetable baby food. That annoying sump pump was groaning away. Not exactly the championship preparation one would envision for their star distance runner.

We drove down to Princeton later in the day in a heavy rainstorm. Greg ran his race. He did not PR, he ran tough but he was clearly exhausted from the past 24 hours of lousy travel and lousy sleep. I do not recall his time. I do recall that, as always, he gave a great effort. He was middle of the pack in the race in a competitive but not great time.

Here’s what I do remember. After the race, as Greg was doing a few cooldown laps on the outside lanes of the track, all the lights in the Princeton stadium went dark. I think there had been weather delays due to that rain, and the meet was behind schedule. Most likely, the stadium lights were on a timer. Our time was up on spring track, circa 2000. Laps in the pitch black darkness, somewhere in the middle of Jersey. It was one final injustice of what was a rocky end to the season. We drove back to Hyde Park in the school van; fortunately, the headlights worked. I drove Greg to the train station the next morning. There were no delays on the northbound trip. Of course.