Coach Runs 250 Laps on Track After Losing Bet to Team – runnersworld.com

Ryne Melcher was looking forward to a summer of free Frappuccinos and lattes. Instead, he had to start the offseason with 250 laps—a 100K—on a track in a single day.

The head coach of Handsworth Secondary in Vancouver, British Columbia, has spent the last five years rebuilding the Canadian high school team, which had dwindled to only a handful of runners. As a local runner and former member of the Canadian national 100K team, he wanted to volunteer, and took the time to build a powerhouse that captured the school’s first track championship title in 35 years.

Yet for the team on the rise, that wasn’t good enough. They wanted win again, and this year, by an even greater margin. However, as the exhibition season came to an end, he noticed there seemed to be a bit of entitlement among the team.

“We had a team meeting, and we said we can’t expect to win a banner. We have to put in effort. Other teams are hungry to beat us like we were last year,” Melcher told Runner’s World. “So, we came up with a bet.”

Bets were commonplace at practice. If the team had to do a set of five workouts, they could bet that if they did the fourth one at a certain pace, they wouldn’t have to run the fifth. If they didn’t, they’d have to do six.

So, to ignite a fire in his team, Melcher made another bet. Not only did they need to repeat as champions, but they also had to beat their total score from the previous year—a tough task for a team that posted 676 points in 2018.

If they didn’t? It would be one sweet summer for Melcher.

“My kids said they’d each buy me a Frappuccino or a latte this summer, so I was absolutely down for 60-some coffees,” Melcher said. “But if I lost, I had to do a 100K on the track. I used to run on the 100K national team, and regular ultras, but now I’m older, fatter, and 100K is misery for me.”

But the kids buckled down.

“The team put their heads down,” Melcher said. “They were picking up extra events, ones that weren’t their forte. Collectively, they had a mantra of ‘we gotta earn points.’”

Before the final event at the championships, the 4×400, took place, Melcher was pulled aside by the meet’s official scorer. Handsworth didn’t need this event to win, or to break the point total from the previous year. Melcher had mixed feelings about the news.

“I tried to tell my team it was close, but the scorekeeper pulled me over a half hour before to tell me I was going to be doing the 100K,” Melcher said. “When a team wins, they normally celebrate, but my team waited for the points to be announced. When they heard we got 719, they started screaming, ‘100K! 100K!’”

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Melcher took to the track last Friday and spent 13 hours—six hours slower than his fastest 100K ever—tackling the 250 laps. He wasn’t alone, though, as many of his team members and local runners joined him for 248 of the 250 laps.

“I knew it was going to be a sufferfest,” Melcher said. “But it was awesome. Members of the community came out, some of my athletes, because we actually turned into an awareness event. Our track is in need of upgrades. This was a great way to show that the track needs funding and is important to the community here.”

A is going around to obtain funds from the Ministry of Education, which did not include a new track in its plans for renovations for the school. Melcher and his students obtained 700 signatures during his 100K on the current track.

The day after his 250 laps, Melcher didn’t move much aside from a three-block shuffle he did to McDonald’s for a McFlurry and salty fries before retreating back to the couch. A few days out, he’s getting back to normal. For the rest of the summer, he plans to focus on getting the petition for track funding out into the community, so his kids and the other local teams have a place to run in the future.

Mary Chau from Kintec