By Mark Walters
It was a dream realized, just in a different way.
Since watching last year’s Penn Relays-the biggest annual track & field event in the world-as a spectator in the hallowed bleachers of the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field, I had decided that I was going to be back this year except as a runner, competing.
Since then I’ve hung up my jersey, but I made it back this year… with a press pass. Call me a quitter, call me what you want. I only kind of regret it. I watched the 115th Penn Relays, an event I’ve wanted to qualify for since high school, and I was all right with my decision to stop running when I did.
The Penn Relays Carnival routinely draws upwards of 15,000 competitors from high schools, colleges and track clubs the world over. Attendance surpasses 100,000 over the last three days of the festival, which comes to a close on the last Saturday of April. That last Saturday can reach the 50,000 mark. Outside Franklin Field, surrounding Penn’s campus, street vendors line the sidewalks. It truly is a carnival. It’s a beautiful thing.
Since Hofstra had no one competing, my press pass could be deemed pointless, but it was a way to get there. To get up close to an event I enjoy and love.
I watched the fastest ever high school boy’s 4×800 meter relay, a 7:30.67, creaming the national record by two seconds and the Penn Relays record by a whopping five. Hats off to Albemarle, a school from Virginia. Hats off to Morris Hills from New Jersey as well. Their second-place 7:31.60 also broke both records.
The University of Tennessee’s women distance team dominated its events, winning the 4×1500 meter relay in a world record time, the 4×800 meter in an American record, and the DMR victory in the college women’s division. Needless to say, Sarah Bowman and Chanelle Price, who ran on all three relay teams, stole the headlines in Philadelphia last weekend.
I cheered proudly as the American men and women beat the world, but most importantly Jamaica in the ‘USA vs. The World’ 4×100 and 4×400 relays, a banner day for USA Track & Field. Asafa Powell anchored the Jamaican 4×100 team.
I enjoyed the luxuries of the press room, walked around historic Franklin Field, and really took everything in. A beautiful weekend for a beautiful event.
I spent a lot of time with a good friend of mine, Tim Johnson, a strong middle distance runner for Penn State. It was his third Penn Relays, having not competed as a freshman.
A senior for the Nittany Lions, he ran in the college men’s DMR Friday afternoon, then ran lead-off for the 4xmile in the Championship of America. To him, the Penn Relays tradition hadn’t hit him till he showed up.
“I had seen it on TV and I’ve heard about it from my parents, but it just doesn’t do it justice not being there and seeing the things you don’t see on TV,” Johnson said. “The things that go on outside the stadium; it really is like a carnival out there.”
Having grown up idolizing Penn State football, he was destined to attend Penn State.
“I’m living my dream. I know it means a lot to me, but it means even more to my parents having raised me that way.”
Johnson is a remarkable athlete, capable of running anything on the track from the 400 to the 10,000 meters, a true utility guy. He split roughly a 4:06 for his 1600 meters in the 4xmile relay, keeping in touch with the big guns from Arkansas, Virginia, and Michigan.
“Beat people,” he said when asked about his thoughts of rounding his last lap of his last Penn Relays. “There were a couple times I could have mailed it in but I thought, ‘the team needs me to get these guys,’ so I gave a little bit extra,” he explained. “And I feel if it hadn’t been my last [Penn Relays] race it might not have been there.”
We finished our beers at a Chili’s bar a few blocks from the stadium. I knew full well that I would never see him run again.
“It’s really a beautiful thing to see the human body in full flight like that,” he told me as we gazed up at the bar TV, the Penn Relays coming to a close on ESPN.
I missed running, and promised myself I’d start it up again, for my own self worth if nothing else. The next day as I approached my bus stop to leave Philadelphia, I gazed over at Franklin Field from the other side of the Schuylkill River. A beautiful sight. It’ll be there next year, and I likely will be as well.