At NCAA XC Nationals, Reflecting On From Where We Came

At NCAA XC Nationals, Reflecting On From Where We Came

Ask any bike racer how they got into the sport, and they’ll often name a former competitive endeavor.

Nov 21, 2017 by Ian Dille
At NCAA XC Nationals, Reflecting On From Where We Came

Ask any bike racer how they got into the sport, and they’ll often name a former competitive endeavor. Activities preceding cycling frequently include running and swimming. But I know racers who played hockey, competed in Celtic dance, or were freestyle inline skaters.

Too small to play football, too slow to run sprints, for all four years of high school I identified as a cross country runner at Southlake Carroll in suburban Dallas. The school is a national powerhouse now, but back in the late '90s we’d yet to make a state meet.

Still, I obsessed over the sport, wore my varsity letter jacket proudly, and with peach fuzz on my upper lip, aimed to emulate Steve Prefontaine. My senior year, in the fall of 1997, my teammates and I experienced a phenomenal season and made state for the first time.

Some of those guys remain my best friends.

I’d dreamt of running in college at the University of Texas, but wasn’t quite good enough. So I became a bike racer. That state meet 20 years ago was the last time I laced up spikes.


The reality of this hit me last weekend, when I finally made it to the NCAA cross country national championships — as an employee of FloSports. 

Memories flooded back to me as I watched these scenes in Louisville, Kentucky, where the race took place.

In the morning darkness, I saw the Princeton men’s team performing warmup drills in the unloading area of a hotel near Tom Sawyer park. It wasn’t yet 6 AM, but they’d woke early to wake their bodies. In bursts, they swung their legs, jumped, kicked their knees.

Watching them, I recalled climbing aboard a school bus of groggy-eyed kids. Coach Willingham, who also coached girls basketball, regaled us with tales of his glory days. How he’d once held the Texas high school two-mile record, but lost it that same afternoon. How he’d worn a pair of lucky socks every time he raced, until they wore through.

I saw Kara Goucher step from the stage of the FloTrack live studio show, and walk toward the tent where she would provide broadcast commentary. It had been 17 years since the former University of Colorado runner won her own collegiate cross country title, but the energy here affected her. 

“I’m nervous,” she confided. Nervous for her beloved Buffaloes.

I told Goucher I was the cycling editor for Flo, and she said she rides, too. In Boulder, she picks her 1st grader up from school by bike. Her co-anchor, Jared Ward, said he regularly rides singletrack in the mountains near his home outside Salt Lake City. Somehow, their affection for cycling made me feel better about failure at running.

Moments before the race started, walking past the empty finish chute, I witnessed fans wait in a long line to buy officially licensed merchandise. A blonde-haired little boy in blue jeans and New Balance sneakers held an orange cow bell — a cyclocross racer in the making.

Thousands of spectators milled around the start area, and I huddled amongst them roughly 200 meters from the long start line, where the pack would become an arrow’s point.

The national anthem played. Then, following a bugle’s call, the same as at the Kentucky Derby, the runners took their crouched start positions.

“I’m going to be sick,” said the mother of a Syracuse runner standing near me. Her daughter had battled a severe oblique strain, but had managed to make the nationals team. The mother looked toward the start line, two hundred runners in a long row, and she did not look away.

An official standing in the center of the wide start area shouted through a megaphone at the fans, “Off the white line.” We all stepped away from the course marking.

A trio of young, bronzed men with shoulder-length hair trotted past in skintight orange singlets, shouting, “Cuse! Cuse! Cuse!” They held a waving flag with a square “S.”

A whistle blew. A gun fired. An arrow head formed, with New Mexico’s Ednah Kurgat at the point. An ocean of humanity, the fans took off running too, and I ran with them.


More than one young spectator dressed in collegiate gear, but unable to compete because of a stress fracture or other foot injury, bounded across the course in a bulky foam boot. I could relate. For as much as I loved running, I was injured almost as much as I was healthy.

The crowd coalesced at another white line, and waited. The headlights of a green quad appeared, then runner after runner rounded the corner and disappeared into the woods.

The women’s pack hit the 5K mark at 16:05, roughly matching my high school PR. Kurgat had created a gap. 

“Kurgat, who transferred from Liberty University,” the PA announcer blared.

We pressed six-deep along the metal fencing that lined the final hundred meters. Arms like tree limbs reached into the air, holding cell phones aloft.

“The All-American, undefeated,” the announcer shouted.

Kurgat grabbed the front of her jersey, spread the New Mexico logo wide and pushed it forward. Then she crossed the line, and collapsed.

“Keep moving, keep moving,” an official beyond the finish line yelled. But the finishers’ legs gave way, and they fell to the ground. Tired chests heaved as they lay on the earth. Volunteers grabbed the women by either arm, and dragged them out of the way.

Someone asked if that ever happens in a bike race. I recalled the summit finish of the Palm Springs stage at the Tour of California. Koppenbergcross, a few weeks ago.

As I watched the women splayed across the ground, a runner from N.C. State reached up, and grabbed the hand of a competitor from Providence who walked past.


Kurgat, who wore her hair in a high bun, collected her teammates.

“We are winning,” she told them. An assistant coach for New Mexico watched the women celebrate, and became overwhelmed with emotion.

“They worked really hard,” she said nodding and sniffing back tears, “they really did.”

The athletes and the media moved on, but one New Mexico runner sat on the ground in an empty tent, bent over with stomach pain. Kurgat stood across the unlit canopy, pulling her warmup suit out of a large plastic bag. 

“Ednah,” the runner in pain yelled across the darkness. And Ednah came over, sat beside her, put a hand on her knee.

They were national champions.

In the distance, I heard an echo of drums; three stoic men sat beside the course and beat Congas in unison. The men’s start approached, and they began to beat faster.

The wind picked up, and fall leaves blew across the sky like amber snowflakes.

The gun sounded and the men ran past — the favorites, Northern Arizona University, already in the lead. Thousands of people stampeded from white line to white line.

We scrambled across creeks, and breathed as heavily as the competitors we chased.

The runners came around a corner. Their stride seemed effortlessness, but their eyes appeared dead. They hit the mile marker in under four minutes and twenty seconds.

A runner from Alabama separated himself from the lead pack, but the NAU duo of Matthew Baxter and Tyler Day clawed him back, ate him whole, and spit him out.

At the six-kilometer mark, a man beside me yelled, “Nine minutes to glory Peter.” And as the middle of the pack passed the mass of fans, I listened as the applause grew louder, louder still.

I remembered how running as a team made me run so much harder. Every place mattered.


Only Justyn Knight of Syracuse could cling to Baxter and Day. He floated a few meters from their heels. The crowd pressed against each other near the finish, where a big screen showed the men race through towering pines, pounding a bed of brown needles.

At 300 meters, Knight, suffering, told himself that if he didn’t kick, he would regret it. So he surged. He looked back once, then twice, Baxter well behind. Crossing the line, Knight formed each hand into a sideways "U" and framed the Syracuse emblazoned on his chest.

He’d raced like a sprinter, and won.

Knight’s mom found him after the finish, and they held a long embrace across the fencing. In my memory, my parents never missed a meet either. Especially a championship race.

The NAU team — winners too, more exuberant than exhausted — locked their arms in a circle and bowed their heads into the center.

“NAU against the world,” the men chanted. “F-the world.” As they prepared for a live interview, Day joked, “Not bad for a little mountain town in Arizona.”

A wall of NAU fans waited outside the white tent. When the seven men emerged, a little boy in a wide-brimmed hat ran toward Peter Lomong, and Lomong lifted the boy up over his head. Someone handed the team a brown paper bag. “We got cookies!” they said.

Day’s pale cheeks were still blushed as he and his teammates began to walk away. I chased him down, and asked him about their chant. “You see the Big Sky logo on our backs? People know the PAC 10, people know the ACC, no one knows about Big Sky,” he explained.

He said he’d come up with the phrasing last year, the first time the team won a national title. “It’s not, ‘Oh we’re underdogs,’ it’s not, ‘Oh feel sorry for us,’” Day said.

“We’re here to represent something bigger than ourselves, that even though we’re a small school, we can still roll with the big dogs.”

I asked Day’s teammate, Andy Trouard, a senior who’d placed 35th, if that mentality motivated them. “Unbelievably,” he said.

In high school, my teammates and I bought seven camo t-shirts from an army surplus store, had them silk screened in bright orange, and dubbed ourselves the CC-Machine. Back then, I used to watch the kids from the Woodlands in Houston, and wonder how anyone ran that fast. Today, the Woodlands is Southlake Carroll’s main rival. 

I stood there in Louisville, amongst all these amazing college athletes, many of them likely running their last cross country race, too, and hoped some of them might become bike racers.

I gave Day and Trouard my congratulations, and watched them walk across the flat green fields of Tom Sawyer park. Trouard put his hands on Day’s shoulders, and he squeezed.

“We did it,” he said.