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Day 24 (Putney, VT and Amherst College) - RunnerSpace.com/Travels Season 1

Published by
Jon Terzenbach   Feb 17th 2011, 4:46am
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There's change in the air. Can you feel it? No, that's indigestion. The change I am talking about is the magical time of the year when nature's sweet nectar is unlocked: maple syrup. Vermont maple syrup. The good stuff. Just up the road is the Vermont border and a small town, Putney, home of Harlow's Sugar House. Calvin and I toured around the woods to see their operation. The trees are tapped just as it begins to warm up during the day and the flowing sap is channeled through a network of hoses run from the tree taps to main lines connected to a receiving tank towards the bottom of the hill. The sap is then boiled to evaporate the water and what you're left with is the greatest waffle and pancake topping ever to reach man's palate. Afterward we stopped in Brattleboro for lunch and walked across the water to New Hampshire because we could. “Live Free or Die,” the sign reads, although I would be surprised to see someone take that to extremes and commit seppuku over Red Box late fees.

We sat down with Amherst College coach Erik Nedeau to talk about the program he has built at the school, which most recently set the men's distance medley relay record at the Boston University Valentine Invitational we covered last weekend. We talked at length about creating the success he's had while drawing from a pool of athletes that were recruited for the academic prestige of the institution. Ned is frank with his recruits. He doesn't promise them the moon like you would expect most coaches to do when having to contend with other schools with more relaxed academic standards. What he does is demonstrate a track record of athlete development (and there are a great many performances to point to). No trumpery, no frill, just hard work. There are nuances of that ethic in many stories: how his team works out on tight indoor track during the winter that he constructed by hand, how he was unaware of having run his first sub-four mile at first because he was only concerned with winning. More to that point—competition seems to be a cornerstone belief and it's nice to hear that fundamentalism of the sport being preached with so many other athletes essentially time-trialing in competition. Leading up to our meeting, I had read that he had competed in several events on the track team to help gather points, including the 100, 200 and triple jump. That is some pretty good range for a guy that earned a bronze medal in the 1500 at the 1995 World Indoor Championships in a race won by Hicham El Guerrouj, but it also speaks to the man's gumption. He recognizes that being a salesman comes with the territory at times, but he prefers to focus on coaching. That's ok with us. After talking with him, he has two pitchmen for the program in the RunnerSpace Roadies.

Special thanks to Christina, Will, Ben, Tommy, Steve and of course, Ned.

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Follow our adventures at RunnerSpace.com/Travels! We'll be posting a blog update each day until "RunnerSpace Travels Season 1" is done at the end of June. You can also expect school visits and fun adventures to be posted along the way as we hit up many of the top meets from around the country to provide the RunnerSpace meet coverage we all know and love! Make sure to leave a comment below about this update or post on our guestbook to say hi!

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