When I went away to college in Utah, in 1976, I did some semi-serious running for the first time since that aborted junior high track team experience. Early in the school year at midnight on one occasion I went running with a couple guys up around the Provo Temple for about three miles. I came back to the dorm exhausted and feeling dead. A girl who had my attentions would go over to the indoor track to run now and then, so I also went over as a way to spend time with her and later continued running on my own. For the first time in my life I started to enjoy running. I even left the track and started running up into the foothills on pavement above BYU, running multiple miles. Several times I would go running at night. I discovered that it was a wonderful way to clear my head and escape much of the stress of school life and girl frustrations.
I started to associate with a pretty serious runner who also lived in the dorms. He would encourage me and give me advice. On the indoor track I improved my personal best mile time to 5:32.8. He talked me into signing up for a 5K that ran on roads and ended in the football stadium. I started near the front with my friend and kept close to him for the first half mile or so but then I crumbled. There was no way I could keep up that pace, I started crashing. I was such a running rookie. I slowed down and was passed by a couple hundred trained runners. I held on and was able to pass several runners during the final stretch on the track in the stadium. The race had humbled me but still I looked at the hundreds of runners who I had beaten and it felt like an accomplishment. But I would not run another race for 27 years. (I’ve always wondered how good I could have been at that young age if I would have continued training and racing.)