I'm Motivated. Just Not Enough To Do 40 X 440yards!

40 x 440yards with brief rest between them was a staple of Coach Timmons repertoire for Jim Ryun and his teammates.  IN HIGH SCHOOL!  And I'm told they sometimes actually lifted weights in the rest interval instead of jogging.  I think that would set the whining college students at Yale and Missouri on a more correct path!

Jim Ryun was the keynote speaker at the USCAA Cross Country National Championship banquet on Thursday.  I was lucky enough to meet him for the second time.  The first time was at a Podiatry Political Action Committee conference in Washington DC just after he was elected to Congress.  He was really pleased with me when I was the only person to ask him about his politics instead of his running career.

He also handed out the certificates to the Academic All-Americans and my daughter got to pose for a picture with him.  Her coach's wife is good friends with Ann Ryun, Jim's wife.  After, when I told her about the 40 x 440yards repeats he did in high school, her jaw just about hit the floor.

Daughter the Elder, center, with Jim Ryun.

Coach Bill Preston greets Jim Ryun.

Here's the introduction and actual speech he gave, rendered in my usual poor camera method.  It's nearly a half hour long but worth it because there is video of his last mile world record (3:51.1) in black and white in the middle of the video (at the 5:45 mark of the video).  Or "before they invented color" as my young daughters used to say!