By day Mr. K and his assistants were mild mannered middle school teachers with fairly dull roles and responsibilities. Some taught math, instructing us in the boring and widely useless skills of geometry and intermediate algebra. Others were gym teachers, spending all day blowing a whistle at kids while they climbed up and down ropes or struggled to complete a chin up. For his part Mr. K ran the middle school woodshop, where it was rumored he’d lost the majority of his index finger when “some moron kid had distracted him” while he was modeling how to use a bandsaw.

There was nothing particularly special about these men, but when classes let out and we went to after school football practice they transformed into the meanest gridiron coaches that ever walked the sideline. “Coach” K had a volcanic temper and would erupt into a tirade if we missed a tackle or fumbled the ball. His assistants, before our very eyes, would transform into the likes of Mike Ditka, Bill Belichick, and John Gruden.

Football is a game of violence and aggression. The coaches would work us up into an emotional frenzy before the games started. We were to have no mercy on our mortal enemies (middle school boys from the other school in town). It was very serious business.

One game we were barely ahead at halftime and Coach K gave us a speech about how to treat others. “What do you do when your enemy is down boys??” (My church upbringing was making it difficult to guess the answer to his question: Pray for them? Help them back up? Turn the other cheek?)

“You put your foot on their throat and CRUSH EM!!!!!” He bellowed.

We all cheered in our prepubescent high-pitched tones and rushed the field like a child reenactment of Braveheart.

That day those boys from the other side of town received a real beatdown.

***

But football was never for me. I’m too mellow, too undersized. Coach kept yelling at me to “put my game face on!” But I don’t have a game face. No one has ever feared my face. This face was made to make people laugh or help them feel comfortable so they can open up emotionally.

So, the next school year I chose running instead. The cross-country team seemed to have a much more chill vibe – a few of the boys smoked weed before races and nobody ever tried to hit you or make jokes about your mom.

Like football, there was an initiation for new team members, but it wasn’t so bad. The new guys would all have to join hands in a circle and then the two on the end would touch an electric fence. We would all stand together and be slightly electrocuted as a sign of our unity and commitment to winning.

Those were formative years, doing cross country in the fall and track in the spring. And because it was so individualized and non-competitive, running became my sport.

I wasn’t very fast, but the distances kept increasing. In college, our friend Mark started talking wild eyed about doing a marathon. He said it was the most painful thing one can experience short of giving birth (which he knew nothing about). Mark dazzled us with stories of running so far that your own flesh began to eat itself in a desperate attempt to feed the body more energy.

The term ‘marathon’ comes from the Greek legend where a messenger runs from the battle of Marathon all the way to Athens to deliver a message to the assembly and then immediately dies from exhaustion. Not surprisingly this has now morphed into a common running event whereby yuppies put bandaids on their nipples and run long distances in tiny neon shorts.

Be that as it may, college is a great time for running marathons and some of my best races took place during this time: my first marathon at 19, my second the next year, and many good races yet to come.

College is also a time of great parties and I can attest that long distance running and drunkenness do not mix well. By my senior year it was getting hard to find time for those LONG training runs (16 miles, 18 miles, 20 miles) that are needed to properly prepare for the 26.2-mile event distance. Late nights, college parties, and haggard mornings were cutting into the running schedule and I just couldn’t quite manage to put my game face on.

One fall semester I had decided to do the Dallas White Rock Marathon in December, but for reasons above listed wasn’t training the way I should. About two weeks before the event I decided I would just do the half marathon and abandon any sort of training at all.

Every year, myself and a group of friends would head down to Dallas for a weekend of running the marathon and that year we decided despite little training to keep the tradition going. The night before the race we went out to an Italian restaurant for pasta, because as everyone knows runners should carbo-load before a big race.

And you know what else is a carbohydrate? Beer.

Surely a beer or two the night before the race wouldn’t make a big difference, just a little dinner drink and be home in bed by nine….

***

You see the problem was by midnight we had already hopped to our third bar. A place called Lee Harvey’s, where frightening men stand around burn barrels with their pet pitbulls leashed beside them.

But lest you judge me dear reader, ask yourself this question: have you ever been going down a not-so-good road and you just keep making little deals with yourself that you break immediately?

It started out as “I’ll just have a few beers”, then “no mixed drinks, I’ve got a race in the morning,” then “no, no, I can’t have a cigarette, I’ve got a race at 7am, which is in 4 hours”.

On and on the night went until we arrived back at my friend’s apartment at 5am for a quick bit of shut eye before the race. (He also treated me to a glass of rare Belgian beer he’d been waiting to open, a bedtime elixir for improved rest).

Though to even think of it now makes my stomach queasy, the body of a twenty-one year old is capable of herculean feats. I awoke an hour later, put on my running clothes and headed to the starting area downtown for a 7am start time.

I rocked up to the race like Hunter S. Thompson out for a light stroll on the casino floor: coffee in hand, cigarette lit. Others were stretching, warming up, checking their camelbaks and power gel belts. Terrible dance music blared from the speakers and people shouted positive things at each other. It was really ridiculous. I realized then that runners take themselves more seriously than even Coach K and the gang. In some sense runners still believe they’re the guy sprinting from Marathon to Athens, preparing to keel over at mile 26.

When the gun went off for the start of the race I surprised even myself: I was able to run fast and felt fantastic.

There is a kind of laser focus that comes over you when you’re hammered, as long as you don’t have to perform any complicated tasks like carrying on a conversation or operating heavy machinery. Running this race seemed to pair very well with my late night out and early morning nightcaps. I just put one foot in front of the other, not feeling a thing. I had that thousand-yard stare straight to the finish line. Laser focus.

I was chugging along at a seven-and-a-half-minute mile pace and it continued this way on until mile 8. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. I had done everything wrong, but it seemed like I was still going to have a great race. Could it be that for the first time in the history of the universe an awful decision had been made for which there would be absolutely zero consequences? I had bent the rules of time and space, my youthful arrogance said this was going to be tremendous.

But at mile 8 every poor decision I had ever made in life up to that point came crashing down on me. I’m not sure whether the booze wore off, dehydration set in, or not training got the best of me, but I felt awful! I stumbled along, crossing the finish line quite a while later. My friends were waiting for me there and said I was one of the most malodorous things they’d ever smelt – wet running clothes, booze soaked sweat and stale cigarette smoke.

I learned my lesson that day. Turns out running, much like football, is serious business after all; and race day is not to be approached so flippantly.

There would be many more full- and half- marathons to come in my life: in Detroit and Shanghai, on the Great Wall of China, and even in Michigan’s upper peninsula. But I’ve been sure to never disrespect the sport like I did that day again.

But the story doesn’t end there, because the results for the 2006 Dallas White Rock Marathon came out a few days later. Even though I knew I’d done poorly, out of curiosity I checked online to see how I’d placed. Shockingly, there was my name and rank – Drew Fralick, 202nd place out of 2,508 runners!? Top 10 percent! How could this be!!?

They had mistakenly put me in the women’s division, where with no remorse at all I had put my foot on their throats and CRUSHED THEM.

Results from 2006 Dallas White Rock half marathon

Here is footage of Eliud Kipchoge, the GOAT of marathoning, breaking the world record at the Berlin Marathon in 2018. His mile pace is far faster than most trained athletes could run ONE mile in. (And he keeps this pace for 26.2 miles!)

Put Your Gameface On!