Most all of us went our seperate ways for college. I ended up at University of Kentucky for undergrad. Of course I wanted to continue track in college and I had plans to do so, until the coach wanted to totally change my focus of events. After going round and round with him in his office, he said that he wanted to turn me into a 800m/miler, I don’t know why or what made him think this; but, I decided to nip it in the bud right there, thus ending my competetive track days. I still continued to work out like a trojan on my own and I began a very thorough weight training regimen.
Troy went on to the merchant marine academy to study engineering. He was brilliant with calculus, physics, and all that stuff, and he won the prestigious governors scholar award; blew the lid off the SAT. His engineering study was going to be applied to the military and he had to alternate semesters of work/study and so forth. He was all set to be station in New Orleans to help design Navy ships. He ran track for the academy and did well in the hurdles, but he started to develop a drinking problem when his long time girl friend broke up with him.
Troy had a very volatile personality, very competitive and driven. Much like a sprinter needs to be I suppose. That’s one thing that I never really had–“the high strung sprinters personality.” I tend to be much more cool and laid back, not worrying too much about anything. I used to have to drill into Troy’s head, “worrying is a waste of my time” but he never quite caught on. His fiery personality caused him a lot of trouble as he often got into fights and got in trouble with the law. He knew the police very well and they knew him on a first name basis. He was a split personality. The scholar/excellent student vs. the “bar room brawler” that he was on the weekends. He was often suspended from school in spite of his advanced placement class schedule, but he excelled anyway in the classroom. I used to kid him by saying, “you’re just one fight away from being kicked out of school and being stuck working on cars for the rest of your life.”
After he broke up with his GF, he started drinking heavy. We didn’t see each other much anymore because he way away with the Marines, but when he came to visit, he would vent about how lousy his life was and how the alcohol was slowly eating away at him. Anyway, later on into adult life, I got a phone call from my mother who told me Troy had died in a bizarre accident resulting from a fight he got into while on leave. Apparently, he got totally drunk one night, I mean really toasted, it was around 1:00am as he was leaving a club and he was out in the parking lot acting crazy. He was hitting on this woman and her boyfriend whisked her away to their car, but Troy followed, went up to the car and continued to talk smack and threaten them both. Then, he reached into the car, trying to grab the girl or touch her and the boyfriend pushed the gas pedal and Troy ended up being run over by that car. This was back in 1998 and the boyfriend ended up being freed of murder charges, I guess self-defense was his case.
Such a waste of talent. It’s sad and a lesson of what alcohol can do I suppose. Very good athlete, very good student, Brilliant with math/science, had a job lined up after graduation, ship building making over 150,000 dollars per year, and he threw it all away. Sometimes I wonder, who he would be today.
, distance running, training for 10k races. I don’t know that it’s a case of “unfinished business”, I really don’t feel that way about it, although, I do wonder often what I could have done with better training, more focus on drills, etc. but I’ll never know what could have been. All I can do is concentrate on what I now know. I don’t have any desire to be a world beater or superstar. I’ll enter a few meets here and there in Atlanta or Alabama as a way to have some fun and monitor my progress. Maybe I’ll continue this for a couple of years, set a couple of long jump or 100m PR’s, then just go back to weights, I don’t know. My life is so hectic with full time job, wife, two boys, etc. that training time is often hard to come by. That’s why I have to have brief but very hard/intense workouts. Works for me.
