Junior year, wrestling season, I was competing in the 189lb weight class, and despite eating less than I had the year prior weighing 20lbs less my body was insisting that I cut from 195 twice a week, the timing of a growth spurt hitting perfectly as per Murphy’s law.
Before the season had started I’d purposefully dropped a few pounds of fat, timing it so that I’d walk around 185-187 all season to rid myself of the stress of cutting weight every Wednesday and Saturday that season.
Nature had other intentions as aforementioned, though that season while shitty in the moment has given me a million stories, this is one of them :
We had a lightweight wrestler (he wrestled a weight class heavier every season peaking at 130-140) who took special needs classes which for the life of us we couldn’t figure out why.
Many hours of brainstorming concluded amongst the football, wrestling, track, and lacrosse teams in their respective seasons came up with “anger issues, we can’t come up with anything else that even comes close to making sense”.
Kid had the biggest ego me, you, everyone has ever come across, which was funny as he rode a bench in everything other than wrestling, where grades 6-11 he lost every match. In a twist of intrigue he did well as a senior, ego likely boosted from football…The coach from our school and the other team having set up him scoring in a Rudy like moment (in a game lost by our school obviously, not freely changing the outcome) seconds before his football career was to end.
So we have Mr. Ego from the special needs program as a fixture in the school’s athletic department.
Wrestling teams can never have enough body’s. He took recruiting seriously, from probably the least expected of places…the special needs classroom.
(Hilariously the classroom, as per stereotype, was housed in a, at least it was finished and modern looking, section of the school’s basement.)
Rewind to sophomore season :
We had a direct pipeline to kids who’d come out with zero, absolute zero, wrestling ability then to our chagrin greatest joy according to their chivalric code and dragon ball z powers attempt to disintegrate opposing wrestlers, start growling, taking swings at the opposing wrestler as the ref raises his hand, not the hand of our malfunctioning flame ball power bestowed wrestler and in the most primal and gutteral of tones growl to a full auditorium “are you scared now”.
I heard about this at summer camp from a kid who recognized I was a fellow wrestler. Our school will be remembered by everyone at that tournament for this.
At least the season over, as the snack shack closed that day the parents working the booth let me haul off a massive amount to the point our entire team, coach, one wrestler’s dad (Mr. Ego from background) all ate off it, and I had banana bread leftover for a week of my school lunches and dads work lunches. A veritable cornucopia for free as I walked up at the perfect time, politely asked, and then said “can I take enough for my team, they’ll kill me if they see me eating off of free closing food as they’re hung up watching the awards”, the guy running the shack said “have at it, it’s going in the dumpster otherwise” and I loaded up a pyramid of snacks on this cardboard thing used for food service delivery.
Our school was very good at getting free food before the bus ride as the snack shacks were closing and giving it away, me not wrestling that day allowed me to wander, and pull off the piece de resistance of free food hauls. One lightweight was amazed.
So our school had a thing for eating free food at the end of meets, and was known for having special needs kids on the team…at varsity.
Needless to say it was a weak program.
Fast forward to junior season, which brings me back to the title, and my above discussing of bodyweight that season :
Scientifically Training For 21:00 5ks At 195lbs
So we had Mr. Ego’s pipeline, “are you scared now” had graduated, and Mr. Ego had brought this scrawny actually special needs kid with him.
He was mentally slow, slurred, and had I believe fetal alcohol syndrome.
He also liked to rap of our victories on bus rides back. Heart of gold, so we were all cool to him.
He was filling out the lightest weight class, 103lbs, and never stepped on the scale over 92lbs.
17 years old, a literal 90lb weakling as per Charles Atlas ads.
A lot of school’s have trouble filling out the lightest and heaviest weight classes, having him got our team a lot of forfeit points.
A couple times he actually had to wrestle.
He lost to a girl, who now that I think about it fits the description of a girl I know at the gym, a very petite blue eyed brunette who manages to have extraordinarily muscular thighs and glutes while being in all likelihood under 100lbs.
Next time I run into her I’ll have to ask, though I think she’s a year or two too young as it would be quite a surprise for a ≤103lb sophomore girl wrestler to be team captain, I remember she was team captain, and thought that girl was a senior.
And in something that is devestating to not have on camera, he once won by one point in the least competent, wholly accidental back and forth match that went the distance. The ref was warning both amped up screaming teams (both sides going mental, bonkers) to stay off the mat, and we conferenced with the other team, their coach, and parents to see if someone had had a camera running. No dice. Best wrestling match ever. Not on camera just like when I hip tossed an oddly only 5’8″ yet 440lb kid with that thing Andre the giant has while 215lb to a dojo/wrestling room full of jaws agape…and nary an iphone in sight.
So we have our 103lber – first initial “S”.
Our coach that particular season had wrestled no heavier than 140lb in college. He was the type who ran lots of miles coming up.
He expected us running the halls for 30 minutes prior to him walking into the wrestling room for practice.
Our captain, a 215lber, the most naturally freakish athlete I’ve ever come across (aside from the kid who mauled him at the end of the season, and a big italian 215 who’s coach, a frail grizzled old italian was warning him not to hurt his opponent preceding the final match of that tournament), would openly skip this shit probably having spent the prior 45 minutes probably fucking his girlfriend.
Half the team sneakily skipped.
The other half of lazy asses did the saddest of airborne shuffles as a pack.
That left two.
Me at 189, and our ≤103, special needs kid, “S”.
Now “S” was like “Mr. Ego” in that he rode a bench in the fall, but unlike “Mr. Ego” he rode the soccer bench not the football bench.
“S” started initially airborne shuffling with the pack of slack.
A 92lb special needs kid who goes through soccer conditioning is likely the best middle to long distance runner, and with sonic boom sprint speed you’ll ever find.
“Run Forest run” may have been based on reality.
Walking to school one day (freshman or sophomore year) I saw the cops chase him. I’m not certain why, it could’ve been a truancy thing – that he refused to take his school bus, and there was a rumour about a stolen laptop. He TOOK OFF down the train tracks. 8+ cops enveloped him ½ a mile later, they HAD to pinzer movement. No one in our town could catch up to this kid.
“S” lost interest in going with the airborne shuffling pack of slack within a week. He took to pacing alongside me, I was going faster after all. That’s more fun. He could run for an hour+ at faster than a 6:00/mile pace after all, this is just a short casual jog and brief chat.
The kicker was that this was all out for me, being 103+lbs heavier, and he’s casually (to him) jogging alongside me talking about whatever and I’m in a mental state where I can’t intelligently answer all that easily.
But I was cool to him, and one of my history teachers told me as such. “I see you’re hustling, and treating him kindly at the same time.”
By mid point of the season it was a fairly evenly paced 3.5 miles in about 24:00. I said fuck the last 6:00 considering no one else was taking it seriously, while I was putting in work.
“S” had this heart of gold childlike innocence.
One day I got a wonderful awful idea, something of a game, a test for myself, and sure to bring amusement to him.
We’re on that final stretch before hitting the wrestling room at 24:00, its probably 300m to go.
I come to a stop, he steps in place alongside me for about 10 seconds, before coming to a stop, and looking at me with the saddest of faces.
“S – I want you to listen to me carefully.”
“Ok J, what is it?”
“From now on, at some point in the run, you know how we end in the wrestling room?”
“Yeah.”
“From now on, at some point in each run, I’m going to say “Hit It”, and we’re both going to run as fast as we can back to the wrestling room. Don’t run alongside me, it’s fine to be ahead, go as fast as you can, and I’ll go as fast as I can. Will you do that for me, run as fast as you can when I say hit it? Even if that makes us not alongside each other?”
“Ok, I’ll run as fast as I can when you say hit it.”
“Ok S, hit it” and I took off, him quickly catching on.
That corner was the usual hit it spot, though to keep him guessing I’d vary it 50m in either direction, once not calling it entirely, and a few times calling it far further out.
He’d leave me in the dust, and I was a decent 200m dasher in spring track. With a couple of turns left to get to the wrestling room my goal was to be within sight of him when he entered ahead of me. By the end of the season that was the case, and I’d be wiped out entering that room, a huge sense of pride actually putting in honest effort while the rest of the team was doing the sad sack lazy pack airborne shuffle while the team captain openly skipped probably to fuck his girlfriend (the coach had caught on and enforced that shuffle with a blatant eye turned at his best wrestler’s blatant disregard of his practice schedule).
That’s the story of my best all around running ability, junior year wrestling season at 5’11” 195lbs, proving that heavier guys can pretty quickly get to around a 21:00 5k or better.
Now to sign this one off as -J aka Persistence & Tenacity