The following piece appeared in the Owatonna People’s Press on February 26, 2026

It’s alarming to consider, but it will be 50 years ago this spring that I first set an Owatonna High School record in the 2-mile run (now run as 3200 meters). I was a sweaty, pimply kid with shaggy hair, a 16-year-old sophomore at OHS. I think you could have called me an iconoclast: in that spring of 1976 I wore a Mickey Mouse t-shirt for warm-ups over my silver Owatonna singlet (a nod to high jumper Dwight Stones) and tucked my mop of hair into a striped Casey Jones engineer’s hat (a nod to 800-meter runner Dave Wottle). Off the track, I kept my Levi’s bell-bottom jeans out of my oily bike chain with a red bandana knotted around my ankle, my hair flowing out of that Casey Jones hat as I sped through Echo Heights and the north side of town.  What a sight! As I skidded my 10-speed into a friend’s driveway thusly attired one day, the neighbor kid looked up from his toy trucks and opined, “You look like a weirdo.” Keen observer, that kid. 

I latched onto long-distance running a few years earlier at North Junior High. It was the only sport I did somewhat well, but I was no protégé. While I often finished first or second among my classmates in distance events, I set no grade records. Kids from Faribault, Austin, and Albert Lea regularly finished ahead of me in meets, which in those olden days were run on cinder tracks, the lanes marked by chalk dust and times measured by spring-loaded stopwatches. 

As I said, this all happened long, long ago. These days, I have trouble remembering what I watched on Netflix last night, so remembering  that time as clearly as I do is improbable indeed. Some memories I recall in cold, clear detail, while other more significant events escape me. For example, I don’t remember the race in which I first broke the OHS 2-mile record. It could have been on the dirt track behind the old high school, or at a dual meet at Rochester John Marshall, or maybe at Mankato West. I don’t remember my place in the race or the bus ride home, even though it would have been a big deal for me. What I do recall is my coach, Ev Berg, telling Todd Hale on KRFO that they were going to start writing my records in pencil, as I wasn’t even letting the ink dry on the marks I was setting.  

I broke the OHS 2-mile record several times as a sophomore in 1976 and then again a few more times as a junior in 1977, but it wasn’t until my senior year in 1978 that I really started getting serious about things.  While every athlete knows that records are made to be broken, I developed a conscious notion: I wanted to put the school’s 2-mile record so far out there that it would never be broken—or at the very least, not without an exceptional effort.  

By “exceptional effort,” I didn’t mean a flukey, one-off performance.  If someone from OHS wanted to become the new record holder, then I wanted it to be the result of years of toil on the sidewalks, streets, and gravel roads of Steele County. There are track events where one can succeed on raw talent alone, but distance running is not one of them. Success in the distances is earned step by step, mile by mile. I wanted my record to be good enough that  breaking it would require EARNING it.  Of course, I had other goals, too; some came to fruition and some did not. I never won a state championship and I didn’t quite achieve a sub-9-minute 2-mile. Still, I graduated from OHS feeling confident that my record would hold—if not forever, then at least for a good long time. I know pride is a deadly sin; nevertheless, I left OHS proud of my accomplishments as a runner.

Thanks to British writer Alan Sillitoe, “the loneliness of the long-distance runner” is a well-worn phrase. While there is some truth in it, no athlete achieves anything of note without help. Mine came from all over. My teammates pulled and pushed me along, got me out to run when I didn’t feel like it, and made a punishing sport not only tolerable but fun. I had great coaches who provided inspiration, infectious enthusiasm, and leadership by example. My parents may not have known the time I ran a week before, but they took the time to attend every meet I was in, home or away. They provided unconditional love, celebrated every success, and consoled me when I came up short.  Finally, the broader community—teachers, members of our church, friends, acquaintances, and people I barely knew—provided tangible support and encouragement. I may not have been the King of the Hill in Owatonna, but I at least felt like the Earl of Echo Heights. As years pass, I am ever more appreciative of the community that encouraged and supported me.  

To date, my boyhood wish to hold the OHS 2-mile record in perpetuity has come to fruition. When I set the record, I had no sense of what 50 passing years would feel like. Now at the age of three score and six, I marvel at how time both stretches out and passes in the snap of a finger. While I am proud as hell to have held the record so long, I must tell you that about 15 years ago, my thinking started to evolve.  

During their prime as competitors, it’s common for athletes to feel the Ted Williams-ian desire to walk down the street and have people whisper, “There goes so-and-so, the best there ever was.” I know I did. It may be immature, even borderline narcissistic, but you’d struggle to find more than a handful of athletes who wouldn’t cop to it.  

But, as I said, my thinking has evolved with time. I now believe that the best and highest function of a record is to inspire others to work hard, devote themselves, and squeeze everything they can from their potential. To be able to say you really were the best there ever was—even if only for a moment in a smallish burg like Owatonna—is a considerable incentive. But a record is not only a static marker of individual success; it is a metaphorical carrot to chase, a tantalizing ring to reach for. It is far more fulfilling to inspire achievement than to clutch a record for eternity. These days, I am less interested in sentimentally clinging to my glory days and more hopeful that some youngster on the threshold of manhood will break my record. As the sun begins its slow descent over my horizon, I await the day when I step aside as a strong young man takes the baton.  

As it happens, a strong young man with the best chance of beating my time in almost 50 years has emerged in Owatonna, making me more excited about the upcoming track season than I have been since 1978. Last fall, OHS senior Ayoub Farah knocked an implausible four minutes off his cross-country 5000-meter time, leading his team to the state championship meet and establishing himself as a member of the lead pack statewide. Ayoub may well set the first new 2-mile/3200-meter record at OHS in 48 years, erasing my name from the record book in the process. If he can run 3200 meters in under 9:13, he will join a very small club. By my count, only five people have held the OHS 2-mile/3200-meter record. Just five runners across OHS history, in an event that has been competed since the 1960s. Some might dismiss this as an arcane achievement in an esoteric event, but the amount of work that goes into running fast for two miles is staggering. Distance runners must pile up dozens of miles every week for months on end to build the aerobic engine required to endure distances at a competitive pace. It’s not just jog-trotting along; the event requires strength and speed in addition to stamina. Those come from crushing workouts: running at aerobic threshold for miles at a time, knee-grabbing sprint intervals on the track, weights, plyometrics, stretching, and other ancillary activities. These miles of trials are run in bone-cracking cold and soul-melting heat and humidity. Success requires year-round dedication and a compulsive, obsessive persistence. Days off are virtually unheard of; exhaustion is a daily companion.  Distance runners are often small and always slender, but their slight physique belies a toughness rivaling that of a fullback twice their size.  

So Mr. Farah has his work cut out for him. No doubt he is a talented runner who has proven himself able to endure the rigors of the sport. Like me, he has a great team around him, an excellent coach, and supportive family and friends. I sincerely hope that Ayoub is able to take a few clicks off the current school record and replace my name on the record board with his, but it’s not going to be easy and certainly isn’t a forgone conclusion.  Besides putting in the work, he needs a few things to break his way that are out of his control. Weather, injuries, competition, and other random variables all go into the calculus.  

One such variable: Ayoub is part of Owatonna’s Somali community. They have overcome a lot to be here, and the fact that Ayoub now has a chance to accomplish something as apple-pie American as setting a high-school track record indicates he has strength of character, not to mention a spine of stainless steel. I know that there are differences of opinion in Owatonna regarding the Somali community. I now live a long way away, but I’ve read the social media comments, which range from celebrating the value they bring to the community to… well, let’s say it: venom and hatred. Then there is the small detail of watching people you love and care for—parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, classmates, and friends—being taken into custody. I don’t know Ayoub personally, nor his family’s specific story of leaving Somalia, but escaping violence and hostility in their home country must have been harrowing. Having to face it again in their adopted country seems particularly cruel. I know this much: Jimmy Carter (president during my record-setting year of 1978) never called Swedes or Norwegians “garbage people,” despite the fact that a few of us may have deserved the moniker.  

But I have not written all these words to push a political viewpoint.  People who know me know where I stand, and it would be presumptuous to think that anything I say will change even one mind. I can’t and won’t try. No, my purpose is to ask those reading this to put aside any partisan political viewpoints and just consider an individual kid, striving to achieve something difficult. Is there a more meaningful quest? As Ayoub slogs through the slush of February and steels himself against the sleet of March, he will need all the support he can get. I’m sure he has it from his teammates and coaches. I’m sure his circle of friends and family love him and are urging him on.  

Sadly, though, he’s running against headwinds that I never encountered. What perfectly innocent Somalis are going through in Steele County, Minnesota right now is so far outside my experience that I hesitate to describe how they must be feeling. Discouraged and disheartened are a couple of words that come to mind. An old saw suggests that distance races are run and won between the ears. Running fast requires not just moving your legs with near-perfect efficiency, but also uncommon mental clarity and emotional balance. Believe me, being discouraged and disheartened can be as disabling as a broken leg.  

So my request to anyone who has read this far is this: if you see Ayoub and his OHS teammates gliding down the street, give them a double beep of your car horn and a thumbs-up as you pass. If you see a slender young man winding his way past Dartts Park in the early gray of the morning before school, roll down your window and give the kid an “attaboy.” Encounter his family in the check-out line at Cash Wise? Call him out and wish him luck. Find a way to show him the community is behind him and will celebrate his success. If that means putting aside for a moment some feelings of anger or resentment, I hope you’ll do it. A pat on the back is a gift to both the giver and the receiver.  

Support from the community, even something as unremarkable as the toot of a horn or a thumbs-up, may be just the thing that Ayoub needs to complete his quest. As for me, I will be waiting at the finish tape, the first in a long, long line of congratulators. You’ll know me; I’ll be the guy with a tear in his eye and a big-ass grin on his face.