it's just everyone's in it together because we're all big something part of something bigger

the being part of something bigger is a big part of it so in all the days of training all those summer days you know and summer's the biggest training period for distance runners uh leading into the cross country season and that carries you through the track season um all those stories and we're out on the road and we're talking to each other and we're telling you know you're a bunch of high school kids running together you'll talk about girls and you'll talk about movies and you'll talk about you know what game did you watch last night but you know and in those days mark mark ran with us a lot uh until we were at a certain age you know he was because i remember when i started i i As a kid, as a 10 or 11-year-old kid, you're training with this coach and you think, oh, that's this big, you know, Mount Rushmore kind of a figure.

When I started writing the book, I sort of realized that he was only 25 or 26 when he started training me.

Uh, so he was still, still kind of a very young guy himself.

So he was out training with us and we all, you know, and we all ran together.

So while we were out on these long runs, you tell stories, right? And he would tell all kinds of stories about, you know, the kids he went to high school with and the troublemakers.

And, uh, uh, he was, uh, he used to talk about being a gear head as a, as a teenager.

Again.

Now, let's get into today's topic.

Hi everybody, I'm Lyle Smith.

I'm not a coach, but I was a pretty good young runner at one time.

And most important to this show, I had the good fortune to be coached by one of the best, as he was becoming one of the best, in a very small town called Bernardsville, New Jersey.

I wrote a book about it called Blood, Sweat, and Spikes, Running the Wetmore Way.

It's about my experience in the sport and the coach who had a unique impact on me and so many other people I got to know growing up.

So when I told one of my good friends from those days I was writing about that time, he asked me if it was a love letter or a cautionary tale.