A Tradition Unlike Any Other: The 10th Annual Reposting of “The Legend of 5-Peat”, Part I
(*Author’s note: Yes, it’s that time of year again. The flowers are beginning to bloom, the stoners are loading up a bowl in honor of the one holiday that they actually remember to celebrate, and down in the quintessential Midwestern college town of Lawrence, Kansas the 91st annual Kansas Relays are getting ready to begin.
While this is the 91st running of the KU Relays, there is also another — equally important, imo — anniversary that needs to be recognized. This will now be the 10th re-telling of this tremendously popular urban legend. 5-Peat may be long gone, his singlet long retired, but his legend will live on forever with those who saw him compete all those many years ago.
It has been lightly edited, but I have largely left it untouched even though some of it is painfully 2010’s version of Chris Hatch)
I was a freshman at Wichita State University at the time and was slated to compete in the 800 and the 4xMile relay at the 79th installment of the KU Relays. I was excited to compete in such a storied even and equally as excited to watch some of the world-class talent that would run in the professional section of the meet. The KU Relays attract some of the best U.S. and international competitors that track and field has to offer and that year was no exception.
My first race of the day was the Collegiate 800. I was excited to compete and was aware that the field would be both competitive and unpredictable. However, I was unaware that I was about to witness something so sublimely profound that it would shake me to my very core and change my view of the sporting world for all of time.
I first saw him at the check-in stand (*Author’s note: a place where runners sign in with race officials, receive heat information and get identification hip numbers).
Normally, I didn’t pay attention to many of the other competitors before a race. I was usually honing in on the task at hand. But one competitor was completely and wholly unignorable.
Clad in an expensive Adidas singlet, his gangly arms sprouting out at all angles like a dying tree, this particular runner was a neon sign of un-athleticism.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had my share of bad race predictions based on solely on the outward appearance of a competitor *
(*Author’s note: epitomized by the “Rupp Incident of 2003” when I, along with my brother and father, taunted Galen Rupp for rocking a nasal strip and running shorts short enough to make a rap video dancer blush. An incident in which I famously predicted that the future Olympic medalist would most likely “suck.”)
but this runner wore goofiness and physical ineptitude as easily as he wore his skimpy black shorts. The ludicrous outfit culminated with two raucous, bright orange armbands that he sported on the ends of his pipe-cleaner-sized arms. Clearly he was ready for something. Whatever that was, however, was unclear.
After my initial shock wore off at seeing that human side-show, I was shuffled off to compete and drug ass through my usual 800 meter run. After running another lackluster race on KU’s spongecake of a track, I staggered over to the water station and turned to watch my teammates run their races.
Garcia and Sco-Jo ran well enough and came to join me where I was coughing up a lung on the sidelines. As I was in mid-asthmatic wheeze, I caught sight of two familiar tangerine armbands attached to their familiar, Mary Kate Olsen-sized, biceps dangling at the starting line.
“This oughta be good,” I said, pointing.
The gun went off, obviously scaring the piss out of the object of our attention.
After slowly recovering from his full-body shock, which made deer in headlights everywhere look decisive, he took off. Immediately chugging to the back of the pack, he doggedly clung to last place. It was a painful few minutes before he bungled his way across the line, chest heaving and breathing in death-rasping pants.
He was mere inches away from keeling over as he lurched to a stop.
Sco-Jo cackled madly, trying to regain his breath. Garcia’s mouth stood open, parted at the lips in shock. All I could muster, for my part, were whispered swear words. Already feeling lucky for having witnessed such out-and-out insanity I joined my teammates on a cooldown run.
Shortly after our cooldown, we found ourselves watching another teammate run the “Collegiate Mile.” As heat after heat of miles were run, my attention waned. But then, during one of the final heats, in the peripherals of sight I spotted something.
Something familiar.
Something neon. Eye-wrenching. Something in absolutely. Dead. Freaking. Last.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, slapping Garcia on the shoulder and directing his attention back down to the track. “It’s him!”
Our boy was midway through his second race in roughly 30 minutes and was faring no better the second time around. In fact, if it was possible, he was faring worse. His face was screwed up into a mask of hideous anguish, arms spastically flailing like he was a shipwrecked man, trying to catch the attention of a boat far in the distance; he crossed the line a good 30 seconds behind the leaders. I was in stitches, laughing madly.
My near-hysteria proved contagious and spread to those around me. It only abated slightly when, for a brief moment he fell to the ground and I felt certain the runner would die from his efforts. Once it became clear we weren’t dancing on anyone’s grave, our merriment continued. Needless to say, my cough hadn’t gotten any better.
About 20 minutes after the mile races finished, we were dismayed to find out that we had to stay for the “Open 5k”, the 3.1 mile fun run that would inevitably feature a plethora of old, shirtless men and anyone else with the entry fee and a pair of Sauconys . Certain that we were going to have to sit through a glorified, geriatric race-walk, no one paid attention as the gun went on.
As is the case with most 5k races, the pack thinned out rather quickly. So it was with mild disinterest that I once again glanced down at the track.
“What the hell?!?!” I very nearly shouted, my mind suddenly reeling, spinning into a collapse like some human black hole.
“Look down there,” I cried to anyone who would listen. “He is going for a 3-peat!”
Down on the track, horse-teeth glinting in the pale glow of the stadium lights, arms spasming like a chicken in its death throes, was an inglorious sight. It was him.
Again.
He was dragging ass through his third distance race in a little over an hour.
Sco-Jo was irrationally angry, feeling that the man we were now dubbing “3-Peat” was slandering the good name of college track and field. Garcia thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, bellowing forth laughter in between wheezes. For my part, I had already appointed myself as the official historian of the 3-Peat museum of athletic ineptitude, and I eagerly filled in everyone around us about the historic attempt we were witnessing. It was during that race that a large portion of the Wichita State Track and Field team team caught a very serious, viral case of 3-Peat Fever.
It was never confirmed, because we still didn’t know the runners name at this time, but at some point we believed that the race updates shown on the big screen had 3-Peat listed as being in the lead.
(*Author’s note: This rumor, now widely thought to be untrue, was greeted by overzealous cheers and too-loud applause from our section.)
Down on the track, 3-peat was a mess.
He was being routinely blown past by 40-year-old mothers with fanny packs and pack-a-day smokers wearing basketball shoes.
He staggered along, hunched over like a woman in labor on her way to the delivery room, pain on his face visible even from the upper decks of the stadium. As he neared his final laps of race #3, I felt a very palpable and impending sense of dread that 3-Peat was going to exhaustion-crap his skimpies down there in front of everyone.
Somehow during all of the commotion, we lost eyes on 3-Peat. He must have somehow slipped off the track and disappeared. Perhaps a coma, or the sweet call of a local Adidas outfitter, lured him off the track that night and away from his attempt at glory.
(*Author’s note: A day later, as I was perusing the KU Relays photography page I found a picture of 3-Peat from the 5K fun run. Leaning forward precariously, his eyes narrow slits of pain, he was clutching his side as though prison-shanked in the kidneys. Meanwhile, forever immortalized in film and in my mind, he was being passed by a smiling, 40-year-old woman, waving to her friends in the crowd. He looked like he was just finishing up the homestretch on the Trail of Tears.)
As we headed towards the team vans, idiotic grins plastered on many a face, I I nearly bumped into someone on my way out of the stadium. Thinking nothing of it, I continued walking into the parking lot.
As I approached the team van, I suddenly noticed a group of three girls ducking behind cars, moving quickly and speaking in hushed tones; crouching low as they slid from vehicle to vehicle.
It was clear that they were trying to avoid detection and I paused, wondering if they were hiding from someone, or if they were merely a group of tweenage car thieves who had seen one too many Fast and Furious movies.
“Come on,” one girl whispered to the others. “Hurry up before he sees us.”
They seemed genuinely terrified. I prepared to step forward and make sure they were okay, but moments before I could, a voice rang out in the night.
“What up, ladiiiiiiieeeeesssss?!?!”
Apparently they’d been found. The voice calling to them sounded like some foul, and seemingly impossible, combination of one of the Ying Yang Twins and Forrest Gump.
“Crap,” said another of the girls, her voice waving a verbal white flag of surrender.
I turned to see who they were hiding from and again found myself in a state of utter shock. My breath simply ceased to exist. In a vacuum of surprise, no air could be had and my mind exploded into a humming blankness.
“Yo, ladiiiiiiiiiiiieees!” He shouted again. Dragging out the last syllable like some ridiculous Andrew Dice Clay disciple.
He strutted past me, scrawny chest puffed out, still clad in his Daisy Duke-length shorts and those gag-inducing armbands. He was as unsuave as is humanly possible. Freddy Krueger has more sex appeal than 3-Peat did that night.
I watched as he was universally, swiftly, and unequivocally rejected by each and every girl, then I sprinted to the team van and informed everyone of what I had just seen.
I couldn’t believe all that I had witnessed in the span of a mere 5 hours.
I had somehow slipped into the Twilight Zone: Morons Edition.
The day one tally for 3-Peat stood as such.
1 Hour.
3 Races.
0 Wins.
Fully rejected by multiple, too-young girls.
Ass: utterly and completely whipped.
The next day I was scheduled to compete in the 4xMile relay race.
I had never done a relay race of that distance and had never competed at the college level on such a big stage. 3-Peat was, therefore, the last thing on my mind as I entered the stadium for day two of the Kansas Relays. But the legend of 5-Peat was far from over. In fact, it was just beginning.
To Be Continued. . .
