An interview with Palmer Weimann

Palmer Weimann (Class of 2019) tells a lot of stories in this edition of the Pandemic Papers. This is no surprise at all. For those of you who have met Palmer, you can imagine in your mind’s eye his telling you these stories with a wide, bug-eyed look, a grin and lots of emotion. It was one wild ride with Palmer during his four years here. Interspersed in there were some outstanding and tough races, cementing himself as one of the better guys we’ve had here in school history. But more than that, and his daily presence and toughness and consistency of effort -- and, let’s face it, his downright weirdness (and I say that with all due affection … and for proof, just check out the last line of this interview, something about “licking doorknobs” … ) – Palmer was unpredictable. You never knew what was coming out of his mouth. Thus, we have a seemingly endless vault of “Palmer stories” we can add to his treasure trove below. Here are a couple more:

--At the MAAC XC Championships down at Disney in 2016, we were riding the bus back to the hotel from the awards ceremony. It was late and everyone was tired and a bit cranky. Not Palmer. Palmer wanted to talk. Palmer always wants to talk. Somehow, the subject of the 1978 New York Yankees comes up. Palmer has an encyclopedic memory. I mentioned Ron Guidry’s epic season that year – 25-3 record, 1.78 ERA, all those complete games, I was a teenager that summer and remember it vividly. Palmer started unleashing a fuselage of even more obscure late-1970s statistics. I can see our “frenemies” from Siena College, also on the bus, starting to get annoyed at this endless banter. Because at my heart I am an immature old man, I egged Palmer on. He kept talking and talking and talking on the 10-minute bus ride that must have seemed like 10 hours to those Saints … and everyone else. Oh well!

--This is a story that is odd because I wasn’t even there but I can clearly see it in my mind’s eye. At the Princeton XC Invitational (I wasn’t there because we had split the squad), there was a rare re-start – gun goes off, runners charge forward, gun goes off again and runners have to retreat. This happens in track but almost never in cross country. Runners line up again. Agitated, nervous, dead silence. Bob Morton (Stefan’s dad and a true Marist XC/track Super Fan) breaks the silence, yelling out: “Good luck, Palmer!” Palmer, in his inimitable loud voice, bellows back, again breaking the silence: “Thanks, Bob!” And then the gun goes off.

I loved watching Palmer race. When it hurt a lot, he would grind harder to make it hurt more. His form broke down, his face contorted, arms flailing, all effort. And always, with his loyal parents Martha and Ted there. And within minutes, my email inbox would fill up with pictures from that race from Martha – also a Super Fan, who never failed to stock us up with pre- and post-race food. We miss Palmer. We miss his verbal antics. We miss his mental and physical toughness, of which he had loads. We know he is a loyal Forever Fox. And we are confident he will do some great post-collegiate road racing as well.

How, when and why did you start running? Did you play other sports competitively before/during/after you started running?

My running career starts all the way back in 4th grade. Every year the gym coach, a wonderful man named Mr. O, would host the “FEA fun run” (I have no idea what FEA stood for). All four of our towns’ elementary schools would come out and run a race. It was a big school spirit type of event that would get well over a hundred kids in the race. The race was dominated by soccer kids, and as a baseball kid I didn’t think I stood much of a chance. And I was right, sort of. I placed 15th overall, a good but not great place. Mr. O saw this and privately told my Mom that I should seriously consider cross country in high school. As he put it “all the kids who beat him today are going to be too focused on soccer in high school. He could be one of the best runners in the school.” My Mom then did that thing she does where she remembers things forever and kept that idea in the back of her head. Shortly before going into freshman year, when it became obvious I lacked the top end speed, strength, or general coordination to play baseball or any other sport competitively, my Mom remembered her conversation with Mr. O from years ago and suggested I sign up for cross country. 

You had a successful high school running career in a competitive running environment. Tell us about your training, racing, highlights and memories.

High school was a bunch of me racing the 3200 and occasionally getting to double to a shorter race. It started in my first ever outdoor track dual meet when no one on the team volunteered to race the 32, so my coach put everyone in it. I had no idea what I was doing, but around lap 5 or 6 I felt like the race was going too slow and so I took off. My strategy ended up working out because I place 3^rd, broke 11, and raced the 3200 at every dual meet of my high school career. Honestly, I didn’t mind too much because I was good at the 32 and not much else. 

There was a long stretch from my sophomore year to midway through junior year were my mile PR was just a 2 mile split. I was that runner. Because of that most of my training focused on speed work. Pyramid shaped workouts designed to get me moving fastest at the end of runs became normal. I never really did develop a kick until college, but it was not from a lack of effort. As for general highlights, here is a quick rundown of some my favorites (not my best, but my favorites):

·      --I once got to run the 4 mile quadruple in a dual meet. That’s the 4x8, mile, 800, and 2 mile. I won all four

·       --Because it was starting to hail and the other team had no one in the 32, I got to wear pajamas and run a 2 mile. I also started with blocks because at that point who was going to say no?

·      -- I ran my 2 mile PR of 9:26 at my state meet during a school day. Our meet had gotten rained out on Saturday and our championships were that next Saturday, so I ran a Monday race. We got back in time for the last two classes of the day, but chaos ensued when someone noticed we had forgotten a freshman at the meet.

·       The following Saturday you happened to be at my championship race and afterwards we had a nice conversation. Neither of us noticed my shirt was on inside out and backwards until my Mom pointed it out.

One of my favorite high school stories is about the time I held a school record for 10 minutes. It was my junior year indoor track. Me and a teammate Matt (who ran for Yale) were both racing the 3k. This event was special because Matt’s dad was the current 3k record holder at the time. Since Matt was a mid-distance runner who happened to have endurance and at the time my mile PR had come during a 2 mile, we had forever debated who would win in a neutral distance race. My coach seeded us at the same time but due to my last name being at the end of the alphabet I got put in a slower heat. So my race went off, I ran really well, my splits were nearly even, and I had managed to break a 30-year-old school record. Matt congratulated me on a good race and then promptly settled any debate as to who was the better runner by crushing my time. I had held a school record for a grand total of 9ish minutes. Seriously, I hadn’t even taken my bib off. Afterwards me and Matt decided to race weird lesser run events to insure that we would always have school records at Farmington. Matt is our 2k steeple record holder and I am our 5k record holder.

Tell us about your recruiting process -- other schools you were considering and why you chose Marist?

I got recruited by several schools, and the process was very exciting. I wanted a mid-sized school in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic area with good academics, so I was able to quickly narrowed down my list to only a handful of schools and Marist was on that list. After a few visits I had it narrowed down to two colleges, Marist and Elon. Anyway, the coach of Elon had promised me a certain amount of scholarship money, and based on that promise I made a verbal commitment to Elon. I was ready to sign on until I saw his final offer was a few thousand dollars short of where he promised it would be. If he wasn’t going to honor his verbal commitments neither was I. One phone call later, I was a Red Fox.

What was your major at Marist and how did you choose it?

How many people would notice if I just copy pasted Joe Miller’s response here?  I knew I wanted to go into Finance or Accounting because I took a few classes in high school. I also figured it would be a good fit for my skill set and give me good employment opportunities post collegiately. I started with Accounting because the freshman year accounting classes would be used in a Finance major, while the reverse was not true. I ended up enjoying my accounting classes so I stuck with it. I then added an Economics minor because I had room in my schedule and I enjoyed those classes too. A lot of people find Accounting boring, which is fine. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Plus most people’s hatred of accounting makes my accounting skills more valuable.  That’s a little economic concept called supply and demand.

You had a strong training and racing career at Marist. Tell us some of your highlights and fondest memories of your four years as a Running Red Fox.

Running at Marist was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I could go on for hours about all the great times, but I will keep it short.

·       Freshman year I suffered from a combination of exercised induced asthma, vocal cord disfunction, and multiple deviated septums. These required medication, therapy, and surgery respectively to fix, so I was a bit light on individual highlights. The team placing second at MAACs is one of my favorite memories, I just kinda forgot about the individual race I had that day.

·       Sophomore year outdoor track I PRed in my first 5 races. I was finally healthy for almost an entire semester (got through 99% of the season before pulling calf early into my final race of the season). The big highlight was Bucknell where I broke 15 in the 5k. I remember the race went out slow, 12:04 through 4k, but then I was able to find a new gear for the last k to get under 15. Who would’ve guessed that all I needed to develop a kick was longer races?

·       My junior year highlight came at the Monmouth invitational. Yup, the MAAC preview race in September. Before the race I saw that they were handing out shirts to the top finishers and I decided my goal was to win a shirt. I ran a great race and I knew I was in borderline shirt territory. Results came back, and I had placed 11^th. In high school I had once missed out on a shirt because I had placed 11^th when top 10 got shirts, so I was having flashbacks to that day. Then at the awards ceremony they gave out shirts to the top 12 instead of the top 10. Made my season.

·       Senior year, I got Lyme disease. Always tick check. The big highlight for me was my final race. I was running my first 10k of the season at MAACs in a “qualify or your season is over” race. I gave the race my all, placed 8^th, and missed the IC4A standard my a second. Sucked at the moment but I look back on the race with pride.

You had a (well-earned) reputation of being a bit of a wacky personality. Do you agree with that and if so where do you think it came from?

I cannot say where or when I got the reputation for being wacky, but I’ll make a list of things I did and somewhere in there I garnered a reputation for being one of the more interesting members of the team:

• I tried to grow a MAAC mustache freshman year. When I utterly failed to grow facial hair, I decided to shave my hair into the shape of an arrow. I also tried to dye it red because why not at that point, but it didn’t work. I may have dyed a few towels red, but my hair looked the same.
• At Bucknell my freshman year you promised me I could run a leg of the 4x8 (Editor’s note: I don’t remember this at ALL and I rarely “promise” anything, but I’ll take his word for it). I had spent my entire senior year of high school running 2:04 (I did it three times in relays and once in an open) and was really hoping to break that time now that I was in college. You promised me I could do it after I ran a pretty good 5k. You then ripped my heart out the next morning when you told me that this team still had dignity and I would not be running an 800. The next year you relented and let me run a leg of the upperclassman 4x8. I split a 2:04.
• For sophomore year I decided to see if the athletic department actually paid attention to our height/weight stuff, so I wrote in 5’12 as my height. Evidently they do because someone corrected it to 6’0. 
• At a community service event someone volunteered me to dress up in an oversized carpet and go on stage in front of an elementary school. The person who volunteered me claimed it was to “force me to be quiet for a few minutes” because Shooter does not talk. I give serious credit to whatever poor soul has to stay in that walking sauna for entire basketball games.
• While at Disney I managed to get stuck on three separate rides. Those rides were: the EPCOT globe, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and the Small World ride. If that sounds bad, it gets worse. The EPCOT globe ride was in German, because Pat Hickey selected that language before I could sit down. All I learned was how to say jelly donut in German. 
• Later that Disney trip I was part of the group that almost caused us to miss our flight. Busses went every 15 minutes and right before we were at our stop the bus pulled out. Naturally, I ran after the bus Peter Parker style (from the original Spiderman). The bus driver ignored me, and we were stranded for the next 15 minutes waiting for the next bus.
• I had friends give me haircuts from my sophomore year on. If no one was around and I wanted a cut, I’d just do it myself. I saved a ton of money and this pandemic hasn’t been as tough on me as on most people. But seriously, if you are willing to risk getting COVID for a haircut please re-examine your priorities. You should care a lot more about your health than your hair.
• I got impaled by a tree branch on my leg while on the first run of indoor track my junior year. I then got a ride back to campus from an undercover cop. After the trainers, health services, and even the ER had a good laugh at my misfortune, some doctor cut open my leg to remove the branch. I got to keep all the wood the was removed from my leg. (Editor’s note: I forgot about this one, too! This was so bad that multiple sports medicine/ER folks were stunned that Palmer wasn’t in shock from the pain; they clearly don’t know Palmer like we know Palmer)
• I had my head shaved right before the Marist invite my senior year. So all my senior day pics have me rocking the Lex Luthor cut. No regrets.
• I spent all of cross country senior year as a testing dummy for the workouts because I had to do workouts at 8 a.m. and no one else did. This worked out once when we learned that the Cator Loop was too muddy and I got a nice new scar on my leg. I’d like to thank Nick Cruz for attending all of those workouts, that meant a lot. 
• I did Meet the Foxes. It was going great for 30 seconds until the fire alarm went off. The highlight of my episode was me discussing my love for Taco Tuesday.
• For Halloween senior year I dressed as Danny Phantom, a cartoon character from my childhood. (Show was on from 2004 to 2007) It was a homemade costume and I put in some A plus effort into. I wore black tights with silver underwear on the outside, white shoes, white high socks, white gloves and silver spray hair dye. The thing that brought the outfit together though was a black t-shirt with the Danny Phantom P logo I had gotten as a senior gift the year before (thank you, Duggan). I was slightly hyped about my costume since I had put some decent effort into it unlike normal years where I’d clobber something together at the last minute. Everyone thought I was a pepper shaker. 

Speaking of which! Your Colonial Relays psych-up rant has been referenced in other Pandemic Papers interviews. Here's your chance to tell your story of that memorable night. Go!

About time! I’ve seen this night referenced in multiple other pandemic papers and my speech was left out BOTH TIMES! So here is the blog post to prove that, yes this really happened: http://runredfox.blogspot.com/2017/04/colonial-relays-day-2-palmers-pr-magic.html?m=0

Before the last two events of the second day at the Colonial Relays, the 1500 and the 5k, a massive thunderstorm came in. The races were delayed and we all took the bus back to the hotel room. As we were waiting in the hotel, we got notice from Twitter that the meet was going to resume much earlier than any of us had anticipated. The bus ride back to the track was very somber at the least. Everyone was freaked out over how sudden we were going to have to race; Joe was pissed, Shea was complaining that she had drank too much coffee (first time for everything), and apparently some freshman who’s name Chuck couldn’t pronounce (Editor’s note: Huh?) had been left at the stadium the whole time. So I decided that, since these races were already going to suck, we might as well have fun with it. I stood up, and channeled one of my favorite characters ever; Jeff Winger, and gave a speech. Was it over the top, nonsensical, and absurd? Yup. Did it work? Very much. Everyone who heard the speech and then ran PRed. Correlation does mean causation, but I have to take some credit. I feel like people went into the race in a better head space than most other teams and the results showed it. I honestly cannot say what exactly I said during the speech and the parts I do remember will not be repeated here because they wouldn’t make any sense.

You've kept running since you graduated. Tell us about your marathon training and race and your future plans in the sport.

I got in really good shape in order to race the Hartford Marathon this past October. Unfortunately, I injured my Achilles driving up for the walkway half marathon. These things happen to me, so I decided to just race through it because I could walk in the morning. I ended up winning the race and walking with a limp the rest of the day so I don’t know if it was a good decision or not. What I do know is I spent the next month trying to give myself some time off and trying to prepare for a marathon, which doesn’t really work. Marathon race day I was tapered, nervous, and hyped up on adrenaline. So naturally I did what everyone told me not to do and went out way too hard. So to cut to the chase I hit the wall hard. My first 2 miles were at 5:30 pace and my last 2 miles were at 7:30 pace. Not a fun experience. Highly recommend. 

Tell us about your post-collegiate path career-wise.

I had an interview on my Mom’s birthday, and her happy birthday call also ended with the news that I got a job offer from WithumSmith+Brown. I accepted the offer and have been working in their NYC office as an auditor since. I specialize in multi-employer retirement plans, which are plans for employees who stay in one field but will work for different companies. For example, construction companies would all have a multi-employer retirement plan, so when workers move from one company to another they can stay in the same retirement plan. I enjoy it a lot because the work is not too taxing (little accounting joke there). I’m also working towards getting my CPA (Certified Public Accountant) so my free time has been limited. This pandemic really hasn’t hampered my social life too much because the constant studying would have robbed me of most of my free time anyway. Not to say the pandemic has been a good thing, but I do have a silver lining.

You didn't graduate from Marist too long ago and still have close ties to the team. What messages have you imparted on our recently graduated senior class who lost so much?

This situation sucks. But there is nothing that can be done to change that. The advice I left them with is the same advice I will reiterate here: “The pain is temporary, but the memories are forever.” When I read these Pandemic Papers, no one mentions how sore they were after lifts, how much running in the rain sucked, or how hard Minnewaska was because the pace got pushed. All people remember are the great races, the great people, and how many great memories they have. Don’t look back on your time at Marist and let one bad semester ruin it. Look back on the 3 ½ years you had and be grateful you got to experience it. 

How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected you and your family? Where do you see it going in the short- and long-term?

My family has been fortunate thus far and we have all been healthy and safe. My parents and me are working from home full time, my brother recently got a job at Stop and Shop to make some money over the summer, and my dog has been happy everyone is around more often. As for where this is going? I do not know. I’m no expert and I would recommend everyone listen to the smartest people, not the loudest. I can say for certain that 2020 is a turning point in American history. We all need to do our part to make sure this is a positive change. Always do the right thing.

What are your future plans -- career-wise and running-wise?

I’m trying to refrain from making long-term plans right now because who knows what 2020 is going to throw at us next. When the apocalypse ends, I hope to get my CPA and start racing some half marathons and 5ks for fun. But for now, I’m just taking life day by day and making the most of it. 

Anything else you'd like to add ...

Remember, licking doorknobs is illegal on other planets.