At the beginning of our senior year, Bobby Ritz ‘10, Justin Froedge ‘10, and I were looking to make the semester one to remember. Living with each other at Beta Theta Pi, we knew we would have the great stories from Homecoming or Bell weekend, but we wanted something that would keep us busy and make us feel like we had accomplished something. We decided to run a mini-marathon.

There are several issues for a couple of fraternity guys that have never run much in their lives to decide to do a mini. First, we had to find a race. Dallas, Outer Banks, Atlanta, Houston, and Burlington, VT were all on this list, but all a little far away. Then we found the Philadelphia Mini-Marathon that was the first weekend of Thanksgiving break. Perfect! We could take a long weekend and make a trip out there to run the race. Second, we had to find a training program.

How intimidating!

Some programs called for running seven days a week while others said run two days and swim or bike for four others. After some debate, we settled on one that said run four days a week and rest the other three.

We started training and it felt like we never stopped. Initially, we started running 3 miles four days a week. We maxed at about 30 miles a week and started to taper two weeks before the rest to rest our legs. Before we knew it, we were running ten and twelve miles and thinking nothing of it. It was hard to find routes for these long runs around Crawfordsville. Needless to say, we could show you every pothole on Ladoga Road for about five miles south of town. Without my two pledge brothers, there would have been no way I could have done so well in the training. Each day we had to run, one of them would come into my room and make sure I was ready to go and sure enough, out the door we went.

The training was great. Running four days a week with two of my best friends really made the semester fly by. Nic Schrader ‘11 also joined the program, although he did much of the training on his own because of time constraints with classes. His brother Nate ‘10 joined us on the journey but ran an 8k (now affectionately known as a “NateK”) due to conditioning for baseball. Before we knew it, the five of us were standing at the start line waiting to hear the gun go off.

As the race began, I reflected on how far we’d come and how we all owed our success to each other. Just a soon as the race began, it ended. Before I knew it, I was struggling through the last mile and crossing the finish line under my goal of 2 hours. Bobby finished at 1:48, Nic at 1:45, Justin at 2:07, and I finished at 1:58. We had done it! We had set a goal and all accomplished what we had set out to do. I’d be lying if I said the phrase “Wabash Always Fights” didn’t go through my mind about one hundred times before the finish line.

Brandon Stewart ‘08, a fellow Beta Theta Pi brother, was living in Philadelphia at the time and joined us at the finish line. After the race, he indulged our interest in Philly cheese steaks by taking us to Geno’s. He explained the rivalry between neighbors Geno’s and Pat’s and with one dissenter (Nate), we ended the meal by joining him in his Geno’s partisanship.

This journey helped me strengthen my relationship with my fraternity brothers. In fact, we have all already signed up for the Mini-Marathon in Indy on May 8th. Needless to say, Bobby has also signed up to run a triathlon and I have signed up to run two other mini-marathons, one in April in South Bend, and the other at the end of May around Geist Lake just north of Indianapolis. With a lighter class load this semester, we all look forward to accomplishing more goals and really pushing ourselves to do our best. With the end of our senior year just around the corner, it will be interesting to see where we all end up and how running will affect our lives after Wabash.

This post was submitted by Will Hoffman '10.

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