The life of the long distance runner revolves around numbers.  From times to distances to places, these black and white numerals dominate the sport.  It’s a statician’s dream, and the runner has to accept this as a part of life.  A PR is far more than just a time; it’s the identity of the runner who holds it, and it’s a symbol of a person at their current abilities.  Heading into the final cross country post-season of his high school career, Thomas Worthington’s Chris Thurber has amassed quite a collection of these numerals so important to the runner.  From 1:53.5 (his pr split from Thomas Worthington’s perennially powerful 4x800m relay) to 15:45 (the XC school record that he has come within three agonizingly long seconds of breaking) to 1,000 (the amount, in dollars, of the scholarship that Chris received from the Columbus Marathon this year), Chris has some powerful digits attached to his persona.  His current PR’s include a 4:19 mile and 15:48 XC 5k. He’d like to add some more. 

“I’d like to get our school record,” Chris says.  “I’ve been within seconds a couple of times.”  In addition to continuing to chase the cross country record, Chris is eyeing the state meet.  He’s putting in the hard miles and enjoying it. "My favorite workout is a ladder of 8-8-4-4-2-2-2-2 x2 with 3:1 rest. The hardest for me is uphill repeat miles with 2 minutes active recovery. For cross country, I usually top out in the 50-60mpw range, and about 10-15mpw less in track."  His training plan calls for the “peak of my taper” to come late in the post-season to ensure a good finish to the year.  After that, anything could happen.  “If I run fast enough, I would like to go to the Midwest Footlocker in Wisconsin and the Mid East Meet in Kettering, Ohio.” 

Helping Chris along the way is the tightly bound Thomas Worthington cross team.  “We look out for each other,” he says of the guys that he has logged countless miles with.  When he first began to run, Chris was taken under the wings of such runners as Bob Insley, Mike Kapus, Charles Doss, and Kevin Ryan, who “were all seniors my first year running that I really try to emulate.”  Now, after four years of cross country, Chris is one of those inspirational seniors, and the team is as close as ever.  In a display of the greater good that comes from taking part in a team sport like cross country, Chris and the team were there for one of their fellow runners last week when a teammate was hospitalized in order to have a bone density infusion.  “After practice, we all went over there for the night,” Chris explains.  That’s just the way that the team operates.  This is a group that surprised their coach by camping out in his yard the night before official practices began at the end of the summer.  “We had a sign that said, ‘Coach Cox, get ready for CC practice,” Chris laughs.  Even with the importance of his individual goals, Chris places making it to the state meet as a team as his priority.  That explains the dominance of the Thomas Worthington 4x800 relay every track season.  “It’s become our premier event,” Chris says of the distance relay that relies on the overall strength of the group rather than the talents of an individual.  "I think it (the 4x800m relay) has become a tradition- we've performed well the past few years in it, and it is always a competitive race to get into within the team. I know a lot of people always have high expectations for it, and everyone loves to run in it. I like relays more than individual events because it’s always fun running with my teammates." 

Though still deciding where he will be attending school next year, Chris does have some ideas of what the future holds.  While not sure of how long he’ll continue competitive running, Chris plans to emulate his father, a runner himself.  “I’ll run forever,” he says.  “It’s such a big part of my life right now.”  Outside of running, fittingly enough, Chris plans to remain entrenched in numbers—he plans to major in math.

Columbus Running Company
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