The Origins Of Elmwood Athletics
319 Elmwood Dr
In the fall of 2018 I was living in a house on Elmwood street. It was a small, dingy college house that I shared with my college teammate and great friend Willie Moore.
One morning I woke up to find myself alone in the house with a guy I didn’t recognize sitting on our couch. He had a full suitcase by his feet and a box of random possessions on the table. He introduced himself as Jamie, Willie’s brother, and told me he was going to be crashing on our couch for a while.
Jamie was from Vermont, and up to that point had lived his entire life in New England. And as of just a few days before, he had no intention of leaving. But in the 48 hours prior to his arrival, impulse struck. Jamie decided he was going west.
He spent 29 hours in the car with everything he owned in the trunk, doing the whole thing in one, caffeine-frenzied drive. Complete and random upheaval of his life just to try and answer one question – how fast could he run a mile?
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Jamie got serious about running as a freshman in high school. He was a multi-sport athlete growing up, but dropped everything else after running a 4:23 1500m and finishing fourth at the Vermont D2 state meet in 9th grade.
By his junior year he had run 4:06 for 1500m and had picked up Vermont titles in XC and on the track. Unfortunately, the harder he worked, the harder his body fought against him. A series of stress fractures sidelined him for the entirety of his senior year cross country season, and seriously affected his senior year track campaign.
After graduation Jamie planned on running for Hartford University. But in the summer leading into his freshman year he suffered another stress fracture – his third in the last calendar year. Going through the injury cycle again was too much for someone who loved the sport like he did; he hadn’t strung together more than a few healthy weeks since his junior year of high school.
So, Jamie decided to forgo his spot on the team and move on from running for good.
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Me running 15:21 for 5k in my final collegiate race, May 2018.
(Coach didn’t make the trip, hence the flower shorts)
Jamie’s arrival in Colorado Springs coincided with a crossroads in my own life.
My running story had a lot in common with Jamie’s. I too had been a multi-sport youth athlete who was burnt out on the politics of team sports. When I found running, a sport whose only measures were the miles you logged and the time on the clock, I fell in love. Running became my life.
I finished my high school career on a high note, and I left with big ideas of what I wanted to be in college.
But like Jamie, I learned that sometimes running can have other plans. Iron deficiencies, over-training, and long plateaus were the story of most of my college seasons. As far as performances go, the bad always seemed to outweigh the good.
My last collegiate race was one I’ll always remember. I was in Chicago to try one last time to break 15 minutes for the 5k. My PR at that point was 15:07, and even though my training had been spotty leading up to that race, I had it in my head that I just needed to go for it.
I went out through 2 miles on pace, clocking in at just under 9:40, but blew up the last mile as my 400’s started slipping from 72’s to 77’s. I wasn’t particularly bitter in that last mile; I knew breaking 15 was going to be a long shot. But it hurt like a blow-up always does, and I suffered my way across my final finish line, 21 seconds off my goal.
But what surprised me was that I didn’t feel the usual pang of disappointment. Instead, I was overcome by relief.
While I look back on my college running days as something invaluable to me – the people, the memories, the opportunities – I realize now how every race I ran simply reminded me of how far I was from the runner I once thought I could be.
Waking up the morning after that final collegiate race in May of 2017, and finally being free of the expectations I had put on myself years ago, was like an elephant was off my chest. I spent the following summer basking in my “retirement,” and like Jamie, planned to leave running behind forever.
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Kyle Merber says real runners don’t retire. They just rearrange their priorities.
I don’t know the extent to which I agree with that claim, but two years after hanging up his shoes “forever”, Jamie was back at it once again.
Jamie was miserably out of shape. His first run was on June 14th 2016 – a 16 minute waddle that included 8 minutes of jogging and 8 minutes of walking in 2:2 intervals.
But four months later Jamie had made progress. He ran a 16:43 3 miler on Thanksgiving morning. Far from where he had been. But progress.
The next two years were a rollercoaster for Jamie. He had setbacks and breakthroughs. Big races followed by more stress fractures. Great track workouts followed by months back in the pool.
His 24 months climb back to his previous form was capped off in June of 2018 when he ran 4:21 for the full mile, and, at last, had eclipsed the mark from his junior year of HS.
For Jamie, this is when he knew he had to go all in. No more questions, no more doubts. He needed to know how far he could take this sport. He needed to get to altitude.
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In the weeks following his move to Colorado Springs Jamie kept pestering me to run. And I would join for an easy run, or a mile or two of this or that, but I had no interest in coming out of my own retirement.
I was enjoying a life free from running. Or rather, a life free from the burden running had become.
Enjoying my retirement from the Elmwood rooftop circa summer of 2018 (PC: Willie or Jarret)
But that changed one night. Sitting on the couch of our Elmwood living room, both of us a few beers in, Jamie and I started arguing about who was a better miler. Our PRs were similar, but we were both hell-bent on defending our case. Eventually things got to the point where I told him I could train for 2 months straight off the couch and beat him in a mile.
We agreed to race a mile at the UCCS track in exactly seven weeks to date.
I remember waking up the next morning, and immediately trying to back track. I didn’t really want to run that race. I was “retired”.
But Jamie and Willie wouldn’t let me live it down, and as the day went on, I gradually talked myself into it. I framed it as a “brief respite” from my retirement; 7 weeks just to show Jamie that I was a better runner than him, and then back to my life of the occasional 3 miler.
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That fall I was finishing up my last semester of college classes and working at a pizza place that delivered until 2 in the morning.
Busy with class in the day and slinging ‘za until the early hours of the morning, some days I only had one real option for running – right after my shift.
By the time we cleaned the kitchen I was usually walking out around 3. Sometimes this meant slamming a Dr. Pepper at 1:30 to keep myself awake (I was back to running, but I wasn’t that serious).
After the shift, I’d lace up my shoes and hit the road. Running at 3 AM was a strange thing. It’s the quietest a city could possibly be; too early for even the earliest of risers, and past the bed time of nocturnals.
And week after week, running through empty streets of a completely still Colorado Springs, I began to feel like I did when I first started running. It was just me and the pavement. I didn’t use a watch – I just ran the same loop that I knew.
There’s one night that particularly stands out to me. It was a cold night, around 15-20 degrees, and I was running alongside Nevada Ave., normally one of the busiest streets in Colorado Springs. But at 3:30 AM there wasn’t a car in sight, and I got the idea that it would be fun to run right in the middle of the street.
During the day this thing would be filled with cars whirring at 50 miles per hour – even trying to jaywalk on Nevada is risky . But this night it was just me, ripping through the cold, under an eerie yellow glow, running 6 minute pace down the 3 lane road.
Over the next seven weeks I got serious. I actually quit the pizza job a few weeks in, and started training at normal hours. I linked up with old teammates for workouts. I was reading running stuff again, following the sport closely, and rekindling the passion I used to have.
Everything else in my life was in flux – I didn’t have a real job lined up after college, and, like a lot of 22 year olds, I didn’t yet have any idea where my life was going. But running, for the first time since I was 17, was the most exciting part of my day. And for some reason that felt like enough.
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The week of the race came, and as I was signing up it asked me for my club name. I wrote down “Elmwood Athletics”. I didn’t put much thought into it; I just thought it was kind of funny, and, without a college to run for, I figured I would represent my place of residence.
When the gun went off on race day, I immediately jumped to the lead. I knew Jamie was in good shape, and he had better foot speed too. My only chance was to try and stretch him out over the course of the 8 laps, and hopefully have put the nail in the coffin by the last 200.
But Jamie stuck right on me, and with 300m to go (lap and a half indoors) he blasted by me. I had nothing, as Jamie blitzed his way to a 4:33. I finished two seconds back in 4:35.
The race was run at the UCCS indoor facility, on a 200m unbanked track at 6300ft. The NCAA gives you about 12 seconds back for the conversion, which, if I were to believe, would have meant I ran in the ballpark of 4:23. Jamie went on to run 4:17 at BU just two weekends later, so I don’t think the conversion was too far off.
The race was over, and I conceded defeat to Jamie. But that mile was ultimately nothing but a carrot on a stick for me to chase. The race, and the seven weeks leading up to it in which I fell back in love with running, had changed my direction in life.
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Jamie and Myself after a 5k race at CU Boulder in the spring of 2019.
I was gearing up for my first half marathon, and Jamie was recovering from achilles tendonitis. These were the early days of Elmwood - no singlets, no gear. Just a few dudes getting after it.
Funny enough, this race also featured future Elmwooder Josh Rogerson (whom I had yet to meet), who was finishing up his collegiate eligibility with Northern Colorado
I spent the following months trying to go after running in a way that I hadn’t ever before. I was running more, training smarter, and, most importantly, running free of the burden of expectation.
I wasn’t trying to force performances that I thought were good. I was in love with the process, and I was driven by a curiosity to see what could happen if I went all in.
As I continued to enter races that spring, I kept on running under Elmwood Athletics. Eventually, I pitched the idea to Jamie that we make it a real club. After a few weeks, he agreed. Elmwood was born.
I reached out to former college teammates Jarrett Eller and Ryan Doner, who liked the idea. Willie – who was living an Elmwood fever dream of his own, running 100 mile weeks and lopping massive amounts off his PRs – agreed to join, as soon as his collegiate eligibility was up in the fall.
And just like that, we were a club of 5.
From there the club continued to grow, adding members in Colorado Springs and beyond. Much of the club's growth has had nothing to do with me; the work of guys like Willie and Zev Caiyem has been invaluable in recruiting new members, designing logos and gear, and securing sponsorship.
Over the years we’ve had a few chances to change the name. In some of those instances it could have meant more growth or visibility for the club. But the club name is, and always has been, a non-negotiable. While Elmwood might not be as catchy as a city-based name or a sponsor, to us, Elmwood represents time and a moment.
It was a place where the core members had to test what running really meant to us, and a time where we, fresh out of college, began to form our identities as post-scholastic athletes. Elmwood will always be about the pursuit of the unknown, and the sacredness of doing it with people you love.
Many people have asked me “why Elmwood?” Hopefully that helps.
