Passion: A story of a Foot Locker finalist

by Andie Tibbets

The Foot Locker National Championships.

40 runners, each placing top ten at a Foot Locker Regional, North, South, East and West, convene in California to compete and be crowned the Foot Locker National Champion.

It’s a hectic weekend for all involved, but receiving an all expenses paid trip to San Diego, where you’re bunked in the famous Hotel Del Coronado and showered with free merchandise from the sponsoring company makes up for all of the trouble.  In short, it’s the experience of a life time, and in 2010, Melbourne's Brian Atkinson got to live the experience.

His passion for everything - running, med school at the University of South Florida, and even just sitting down over the phone with me to talk - overflows before I’ve even asked the first question.

He laughs when I ask, before we start the interview, if he likes USF.  "It’s personal gain, I'd say.  I’m trying to learn a little more about my top pick."  Brian just laughs and talks and before I need to ask anything else, he spills over into Regionals, noting that the biggest challenge of that day was trying to hold onto your pace for a little while.

The South Regional race in itself, while not affiliated with the regular high school cross country season at all (although it feels like they should be), takes place weeks after the State meet in Florida. It’s held in McAlpine Park, close to Charlotte, in North Carolina.

The course itself is famous for being “really, really fast,” as Brian describes. “The biggest challenge is the start - it’s about an 800 meter straight shot into a hairpin turn that has to be more than ninety degrees. You’ve got high schoolers all around you just pumped out of their minds so it’s really hard to hold on. You have to stay in the front. Otherwise it thins down,” he says.

And, I must say, for a race that took place six years ago, the man has a remarkably good memory as he tells me that every kid, for the first mile, clocked about a 4:35 mile time, which nobody could hold onto, especially not Brian.

“I wasn’t running 4:35’s,” he laughs, “but there was nothing else to do, so you do it.” It’s not ahard course, given as the course is, in Brian’s terms “basically flat but for one short, steep hill just after the mile mark, and that’s where the separation occurs.”  On that hill and afterwards, the real race wasn’t in their feet or lungs- it was the race of “who can fade the slowest?” Brian hums for a minute about the hill, obviously reliving memories, and not all of them good.

“Let me say it this way,” he says suddenly, and sounds sad and proud all at once. “There are people that go into the Regionals race thinking they’ll come out top ten- then they make it over the hill and suddenly their view of where they’re gonna come out is drastically different.”

The race in itself, for Brian and all the other runners that day, was loud. “There’s screaming everywhere for the first two miles,” Brian says.  “But then on the third mile you loop out into the forest, around a lake, and it’s very quiet. Only the coaches and the die-hard fans can get back there. It’s mentally the hardest mile - with just you and those around you, battling it out.”

At eighth or ninth place on his third mile, Brian wasn’t feeling very safe. When another Florida runner passed him (BK's Colin Barker), Brian tagged along and they went through it together. It was like the calm before the storm it seems - with about 600 meters to go, the course opened up and theywere back in the throng of screaming people. He finished the Regionals meet in 10th place - just qualifying for a place in California.

About two weeks later, he runs nationals on his first trip to California. In the days leading up to it, he’s nervous, but not as nervous as he was before Regionals. “I wanted to run really well, of course, but my big goal was to make it to Nationals, so there wasn’t as much pressure. I wanted to be an All-American, which is placing top 15.

But as he found out, Foot Locker Nationals was “a whole new ball game.”

All of the runners were of a higher caliber, and nobody faded as fast as Brian was used to. It was raining that day for the first time in several years, and, as the course became muddier, the steep upward and downward hills that the race boasted, proved to be difficult.

On his second lap over the downhill, Brian slipped in the mud and “sort of slid” downwards. “I remember being in shock,” he says, laughing, and then all I thought, as I was sliding, was “aw, crap.” He was less than a mile from the finish, but the fall didn’t affect him much.  “It didn’t take much time off, being as I slid more than fell, and I had an adrenaline rush so I got back to my feet really fast and got back in the race with a really hard rush that dropped before I hit the finish.” Brian finished the Nationals race in 23rd place overall, falling short of his All-American goal but still feeling like he’d outrun his rank because he should have placed between 36th to 40th.

It’s no secret that those who run the Foot Locker Championship are held to a higher mantle, and Brian’s experience was no different. “In terms of college recruitment, there was more credibility. A lot of people think that it’s a free pass to go to the college of your choice but it’s not - because, honestly, I don’t think there’s enough money in the running program in general.” This is, I consider, as I scribble his words down, a shame in itself.  “It helps to get into college, though, and it opens the door to talk to college coaches,” he points out. “Plus it’s a cool thing to be able to say and it’s cool to be only one of forty people in any specific year who can say that.”

I ask him if there’s any advice he wants to give to those who may be aspiring to run the race in the coming years, and he grows quiet as he thinks. When he speaks again, it’s just like the beginning of the phone call - passion for running overflowing into his voice as he says, “if I was talking to ayoung high schooler - a freshman or a sophomore - I’d tell them to try to get there by senior year.

Do progressive training. Slowly build your miles, and be consistent. I built 10 to 15 miles per week every year (which meant by the end of freshman year he was running 40 miles per week, sophomore year 50 miles per week, junior year 60 to 70 miles and senior year was about 70 to 80 miles per week.)

As for race advice, he advises not to psych yourself out. “Think of each race as an extension of training- just running a hard workout. Don’t put pressure on yourself, and run what you’re capable of.”

“The Foot Locker Championship,” he concludes, “is a great experience. It’s very special and just one of those things, you know, getting the star treatment and all that. As a freshman, you want to get there, and I think that it’s really good for high school cross country. It’s fun for people to aspire to go to, it’s amazing to run against each other - It’s like being in a small pond, you know, and then suddenly you’re dumped in the sea and you see how much more you can grow. “

He laughs a little bit before he says  “So. Anyway. Yeah. That race is- uh- two thumbs up!”

You took the words right out of my mouth, sir.