HOW FAST COULD I RUN A 5K IN HIGH SCHOOL?

How I accidentally found a record of my race times over thirty years after I graduated from high school.

By Shane Smith

Yours truly running in the 1984 GHSA 3A State Cross Country meet at the Al Bishop Softball Complex in Marietta, GA

Since I started running again thirty-something years after I ran for my high school cross country team, current high school cross country runners that I help coach during a summer training program have been asking me how fast I ran the 5K as a teenager in the 1980s.  I hadn’t been able to tell them with any accuracy what my 5K and 10K times in high school were, but now, I have learned that I can tell these kids exactly how fast I ran some races when I was their age.

In the 1980s, race results were not posted on the internet almost immediately after a meet ended.  We didn’t wear watches with GPS that mapped out the course that we ran, the pace that we ran, or our finish time.  All we had in the ‘80s was a coach who recorded our times with a stopwatch and a clipboard.  I have long since lost touch with that coach.  He retired and moved out of state.  Even if I could find him, I doubt that he’d still have the notes from those races thirty or thirty-five years ago.

I wasn’t the fastest runner in any cross country meet that I ran in during high school.  I wasn’t even the fastest runner on my team.  To be honest, I only ran cross country and track as a way to stay in shape for wrestling season.  My high school’s cross country team had two runners that were far and away the fastest ones.  I would fluctuate between being the third runner and the seventh runner, depending on how good I was running that day.  I was no slouch though.  The cross country team that I ran on in high school always finished in the top six at the state competition, and our team was good enough that we sometimes scored perfect 15s in dual or tri meets.  We also took the team first place honors in several invitational meets, some of which had ten or fifteen teams.  So while I wasn’t the fastest individual runner on my team, I would like to think that I helped contribute to the team’s overall success during the three years that I ran cross country.

Still, I couldn’t accurately tell anyone what my 5K or 10K times were in high school.

Oh! How I wished that I had kept a record of my times when I was a teenager. 

Recently, I found out that I did keep a record of my race times, and I had forgotten completely about it.

Here’s how I found out.  Over the course of several years, I have left boxes of old stuff at my mother’s house because I always lived in small apartments or in places with roommates, and she had a nice, big shed where I could store all of my old stuff.

Then just two years ago, I bought a home of my own and had a nice, big shed installed in my back yard.  Since I bought that home, my mother has been asking me to take all of my old boxes out of her shed and move them into mine.  When I went to visit her during the Christmas holidays, I finally granted her wish.  I went into her shed and retrieved all of my old boxes of stuff.  There were so many that I needed two trips to get them all.

One-by-one, I went through the boxes. I found an assortment of old stuff—photographs, newspaper clippings of my glory years as a high school wrestler, trophies, worthless baseball cards.  I threw some of the old belongings out.  I donated a lot of stuff to Goodwill.  Still, several of the boxes did make their way into my new shed, where they will likely be stored until I die.

Finally, I was down to my final two or three boxes.  I opened one of them.  I don’t remember everything that was in that box, but there, at the very bottom of it, I found something that I didn’t know I had kept.  There, at the bottom of that box was a folder.  Inside that folder, I found a stack of old race bibs—bibs that I had worn in various 5K and 10K races with my high school cross country team in the 1980s.  I was about to throw them out when one of the bibs fell out of the folder.  It landed face down.  As I went to pick the old bib up, I saw some writing on the back of it.  I looked closely at the writing, and there—in my distinct handwriting—I saw that I had written the date and location of the race.  Even more importantly, I had written down my time!  I couldn’t believe it.  I turned over other bibs, and sure enough, I had recorded the dates, locations, and times of most of those other races as well. 

I cannot explain my excitement at that moment and do it justice.  My hands were holding a record of the 5K and 10K times that I ran in high school!  These pieces of long-forgotten paper were providing me with a record of what times I ran in road races and cross country meets in the 1980s.   These old bibs that had just rested in the bottom of a box in my mother’s shed for over three decades were the answer to a prayer.  Now, I have information that I have always wanted but thought I’d never find.  Now, I know what some of my 5K and 10K times were back when I was a high school harrier. 

For anyone who is curious, I was a much faster runner in high school than I am now.  Since I’m now in my early fifties, and I didn’t run at all for over thirty years, that fact shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Since I started running in road races again just two and a half years ago, my personal best for a 5K is 23:10, and my personal best for a 10K is 50:31.  Sadly, due to injuries, I haven’t come close to running either of those times during the past year.  In high school, my 5K times consistently ranged from 20:50 to 18:23, and my 10K times ranged from 41:50 to 39:23.

Oh! How I would love to be able to reach those run times again!  But even if I don’t, it’s a good feeling to know that once, when I was younger and skinnier, I could run some very respectable times.  And I would never have known what those times were if my mother hadn’t insisted that I clear over thirty years of my stuff out of her shed.

Thanks, Mom.  I owe you.

1984 GHSA 3A State Cross Country Meet. I'm the North Hall Runner