Sprints, sickness and Suicide Run's all in a day's work

Trapped in the locker room with a group of men who might just as well be a band of agitated silverback gorillas, I'm quickly finding out that "Yes" is the only answer that will leak out of my mouth when questioned by any of these hulking wrestler types.

I came to cover the team's annual "Suicide Run" training exercise, a hellacious sprint down 33^rdStreet, over the rolling sidewalks of Kiwanis Avenue, to a particularly diabolical looking hill at Sherman Park near the Great Plains Zoo where they probably escaped from in the first place.

More than twenty of them grumble about the wrestling room, stretching and asking the skinny-necked reporter about the nature of his business:

"You writing a story?"          

Yes.

"Are you Mirror people going to give us some more press this year?"

Um, yes.  Definitely.  Whatever you want.

"You coming on the run today?"

Before I have a chance to laugh at the foolishness of the question, Head Coach Jason Reitmeier throws me some athletic shorts and a wrestling T-shirt and tells me to put them on.

Ah. 

I guess that's a yes as well.

As I get changed, Coach Reitmeier takes a wide stance in the doorway and starts giving out orders for the run.  He's words are short and to the point, choosing his sentences carefully so won't have to repeat himself.  The older wrestlers gripe about the run, knowing how it will end, and the new wrestlers look nervous, knowing they have to prove themselves to a team that demands perfection.

"Alright boys, let's get to it," he steps aside and we all thunder out the doors of the Elmen Center toward the park a few miles away.  They don't run with any sort of technique like the track team or cross-country team, they just doggedly hustle wherever Coach tells them to go, noses toward the ground and grunting when they get tired.

On they way, if any wrestler falls behind, one or two of the stronger ones hang back to offer short-lived words of encouragement followed by, "now get your ass moving."

By the time we get to Sherman Park and make our way to the base of the expansive hill, Coach Reitmeier is already standing at the summit, and the sun that comes through the trees lights him up like a twisted holy man, reminding the wrestlers of the fiendish workout he planned to use to baptize them into the new season.

Assistant Coach Tom Meester towers over the men with arms folded and harps at them to partner up for wind sprints up the hill.  I find myself paired up with senior 125-pounder Al Meger standing behind the starting line.  Everyone takes their places and waits for Reitmeier to give the word.   He tells us we all have to run up and down the 75 yard the hill five times each.

As he raises his hand and yells "Go," Reitmeier's first wave of brutes storm their way to the top.  It had rained the previous day, so it was muddy and the grass was slick-all of them slipping and clawing at the ground with their hands until they get up off their dirty knees and press onward. 

They move hungrily toward the summit, certain they were training harder than any other team in their division.  Last year they were close, managing second place at Division II Nationals, but they starved for first.  Senior Ty Copsey has a score to settle with Western State's 197-pounder Donovan McMahill who beat him for the title, and senior Jay Sherer is on a personal campaign to add another national champion ring to his finger. 

They scurry along because they know they have to, and if they don't, it will inevitably mean certain defeat at the hands of someone less worthy then themselves.  Nobody complains, they just run and grunt and then run some more.  Even freshman 133-pounder Jeremiah Peterson, who recently had a kidney removed, keeps his mouth shut, sprinting up the hill faster than most of his older counterparts.

For the first five sprints, I manage well enough, until Reitmeier, somehow unimpressed with the pain his team was suffering, tells everyone to do it again.  Meger looks at me as I begin to turn pale, and asks if I want to keep going.

Yes.

Of course, it seems noble of me to say that, but after my next sprint I fall to my hands and knees and start vomiting against a spruce tree, only to hear a miscellaneous voice yell, "Yeah! ‘Atta boy, if you're not puking, you're not working hard enough," on its way up the hill.

Unfortunately, regurgitating your spaghetti doesn't exempt you from practice, even if you're a reporter.  Of all the wrestlers, I count at least four others who heave their lunch during the workout, and Reitmeier calls down, "Are you going to lay there, or are you going to get back up, Green?"

Like I ever had a choice.

Junior Jason Jeremiason reaches his hand out and pulls me to my feet, points to the top and mischievously smiles as he says, "You're turn, buddy.  Up you go."

Reitmeier bellows threats at the wrestlers, slowly hammering them into excellence, "Challenge each other," he says. "Marcus!  If you don't beat Sweny up that hill I'm going to make you carry him next time."

We dart all over that rotten hill until he's is certain we've suffered thoroughly, and then calls his team in around him.  He explains his goals for the season, about how 2^ndplace was good last year, but this year national champions was the only title befitting of Augustana's wrestlers.

"You boys did good today," he says.  "Now find your own way home." 

He sends them charging over the hill back toward campus, all of them thumping their chests and hollering on their run back to their cages in the Elmen Center.