Dude can run

Alert blog followers may notice a new (unattached) name in the results: Nick Vandermolen. Even more astute readers will note that I have been misspelling Nick’s name. Oops. Anyway! Nick is known around the track team as simply “Nick The Swimmer.” That’s because Nick was a record-setting member of the men’s swimming team at Marist. He is a senior and his decorated swim career is now over.

As Nick slowly transitions into adult life – that’s what college seniors must do, after all! – he is aspiring to be a triathlete. Part of the triathlon is running, and Nick asked to join our team this spring. He had been pestering me on and off about this for a while. I’m easy to find and the swimmers know me: I’m the goofy middle-aged schmoe that deep-water runs while they are practicing in the early morning or the afternoon. Anyway, now that Nick’s college swim career is over, we gladly obliged his request to piggy-back on our team when he can. In order for him to become part of an elite-level triathlon training team, he needed to hit a certain mark for the mile run. At Stony Brook, with his time of 4:17.93 for 1,500 meters, he achieved that goal, and we are proud of him and happy for him (in the photo, Nick is wearing the dark colored singlet and he is surrounded by his Marist track brothers). Nick has joined us for practice when he can, and he is running as many meets on our schedule as possible. He fits right in with our distance-running crew: Another freak in the freak kingdom.

Nick’s form is a bit funky. Of that there is no doubt. But there is also no doubting his supreme fitness that he carried over from the swim training, and his awesome toughness in both workouts and races. This much is clear, as he would say: Dude can run. And we’re glad to have him with us for a few more weeks.