The Week of the Penn Relays: April 28, 2023

Photo of Liam Boylan-Pett from Here Comes Columbia by Liam Boylan-Pett in Tracksmith’s Meter Magazine.

From inside the hallowed brick walls of Franklin Field

Written by Poor Richard (poor precedes the names of all Tracklandia interns)

This Weekly Short is dedicated to Liam Boylan-Pett’s inspiring piece: ‘Here Comes Columbia!’, written about his beloved college program, his place in it, and the trajectory facilitated by his teammates, coaches, program affiliates and those that came before him.

We here at Tracklnd love the piece because it is a look into a single program, but every program has its own story, its own lore, legends and myths shaped and stretched by the people In it, the people that came before and the people to come in the future.

A relay is a perfect encapsulation of a program’s strength and identity. The team is constructed by selecting the best personnel for the task at hand.  The order that they are to be run in is determined by the coach’s and team’s assessment of their competition and tuned against what they expect will be the strategies and attacks of their competitors.

These decisions are shaped by years of build-up, from the culture and training methodology formulated by the coach, which then influences who they recruit and then how those athletes respond to the culture and training of the program, accepting it in a way that makes them better, while putting their own mark on it.

All of this is represented in how the team competes on the day of the race, displaying their program’s identity and strength in contrast to other teams with stories and traditions of their own.

Teammates will never stop talking about their exploits and those of their teammates in a collective effort against rivals, whether it’s on the run the next day or at a garden party 20 years down the road. The team dynamic creates the opportunity for heroic feats because every move made and runner passed is in service to the team, every leg a chapter in a story owned and written by all.

There is no better showcase of this than at the Penn Relays. Winning at the Penn Relays is a culturally defining moment for a team as much as a national championship. Many consider the Penn Relays to be the de facto outdoor collegiate relay championships. Go ahead and deny it and then think about it for a long while. The Penn Relays have been around for 128 years. The day a program gets their first wagon wheel, they have arrived.

HERE COMES COLUMBIA!

Written by Liam Boylan-Pett, hero of Columbia.

A modest proposal-

Pro teams can have this too.

There has been an infatuation with pro groups going after relay world records in set-up time trials. This trend seems to have fallen out of vogue this year, but we shouldn’t let the void it has created go completely unfilled.

A record achieved in a solo albeit paced attempt is a marvelous display of potential for a team, but we don’t know what they’re truly capable of until they show it against the best in a battle of wits as well as strength… which is what the fans really want to see. We all want to see a world record, but what we really want is to see a world record achieved as a part of a strategy to beat an opponent in a race where the goal is to win. We want to hear the words: “The On Athletics Club has defeated the Bowerman Track Club and it took a world record to do it!” or the reversal of that. Replace those teams with your favorites and add a few more.

If the Penn Relays was a set-up time trial, it would have lasted until 1896.

It is understandable that a brand and team would not want to submit themselves to the possibility of being beaten by a rival, that stings! And it flies in the face of the branding for most of the pro teams out there, who describe themselves or aspire to describe themselves as the best in the world. The problem is that if there was a competition amongst these teams, we would know exactly who is the best and how others stack up. Nobody likes to get beat but imagine if the NFL did not have a set schedule and it was instead left up to each team to decide who they were going to play? We would never see the best teams on the same field with each other. But guess what getting beat does to you? It makes you better. Guess what getting beat publicly does to a team/brand? It makes them want to fund ways to not get beat next year, to scheme up the best strategy, to find the best runners, to win the dang thing, so that they can truthfully say that they have the best running team in the world, and their products are worn by champions.

Instead of another relay world record attempt to take place sometime in the future, I submit this invitation to be used by any brand supporting a pro team. Please feel free to use:

[Professional Running Team,

We cordially invite you to compete in a (insert one of the following: DMR, 4xMile, 4x800m, 4x400m) race in (big city location) on (Date: at least 4 months down the road at a time in the calendar that makes sense). The 4 athletes on your team do not have to be of the same nationality but do have to belong to the same current publicly known training group. We are accepting the top 8 teams into the race based on the PRs, SBs, resumes and world rankings of the 4 athletes you put forward to race. We will pay for travel and accommodations for the 4 athletes you select to race representing your team. The prize to winning team in this competition provided by us is $100,000.

Team entries are due by (deadline date: one month from now).

May the best team win!

Sincerely,

The Greatest Running Footwear and Apparel Brand in the World]

…I think you could even get it done with a $50,000 grand prize… and make the invitation public of course.

My guess is the viewership of an event like this would be pretty dang good, and if that’s the case, brands have a meaningful, watched competition where athletes are actually wearing the uniform of the brand that pays them, because currently when they get to the highest ovals of the sport- the Olympics and World Championships, they are wearing a national kit and their sponsors aren’t allowed to post about their achievements.

The worst thing that could happen is that nobody bites, everyone knows who didn’t show, you pay your own athletes $100,000 for running what is eerily similar to a set-up time trial and they probably break the world record.

Enjoy the races. Marvel at the Wheels.