As humdrum stories go, this one seemed to have an especially foreseeable conclusion.
As expected, Lee Emanuel, the defending NCAA indoor mile champion, glazed the one-mile field of competitors at the Mountain West Conference Indoor Championships inside the Albuquerque Convention Center Saturday, racing to first place with a time of 4:05.85 (4:00.53 altitude-adjusted) and smashing the previous Mountain West Conference record of 4:10.04. His time was more than enough to qualify for NCAA Preliminary Rounds, setting the stage for a possible repeat as NCAA mile champion.
What he did next, however, was astounding.
Returning a mere 40 minutes later to race in the 800-meter run, Emanuel surged late in the race, overcoming a short turnaround while chipping away at late leader BYU’s Brian Weirich.
In all, Emanuel finished with three gold medals, the first coming on Friday in the distance medley relay.
The storybook endings came on Saturday. Emanuel started at the back of the pack during the 800-meter run, in ninth place.
Then, suddenly, he shifted — like a lion chasing down an antelope. As he pursued Weirich, Emanuel’s sluggish steps turned into a spurt of sonic speed.
“I could see that he was struggling at the end,” Emanuel said. “I had the momentum coming off the bend, and I just flew. When I got that close to the end, I felt that I had it.”
The finish line fast approaching, fatigue bogged Wierich down. Emanuel drew even, then past, as Weirich receded into the background.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Emanuel wasn’t supposed to be so sure-footed. He just jaunted through the mile event, punctuating it with a record finish.
“To come back and run an 800 like he did is outstanding,” Lobo head coach Joe Franklin said. “He’s proven himself to be one of the better milers in the country.”
A few days before, Emanuel was fighting a head cold, the most antagonizing, lung-sapping impediment to a runner.
“I was doing everything I could — drinking Pedialyte, taking these weird salt baths, rubbing stuff into my feet,” Emanuel said. “I don’t know what it was.”
Soup sessions and superstitious ceremonies later, Emanuel’s sickness was cured. But Friday night, he was shaking off a debilitating case of insomnia, eyes heavy as an anvil, Saturday’s one-mile competition saturating his thoughts.
“I had a terrible night sleep (that) night,” Emanuel said. “I haven’t slept for about four days, for some reason. But it doesn’t seem to bother me.”
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Emanuel is, Franklin said, the ultimate competitor. Two years ago, Emanuel would have been hard pressed to compete in more than one event, let alone in the same day.
“Oh, no way,” Franklin said, chuckling. “He couldn’t have done it last year.”
Emanuel concurred.
“I tried it two years ago, and I came in last in the 800,” he said. “Compared to where I was two years ago, I’m a completely different athlete.”
Franklin said subtle changes made a dramatic difference.
“At that level, it’s the little things that make the difference,” Franklin said, like eating right, sleeping and “making sure you wash your hands.”
Those everyday tasks are, to Franklin, why Emanuel has outclassed everyone he has faced thus far. It’s why he can race in difficult events back-to-back, Franklin said.
“He recovered very quickly,” Franklin said. “His body can rebound very quickly. It set the stage for us to get third in the meet. To come back and gut it out, he had to really dig deep that last 50.”
But, Franklin said, Emanuel’s potential seems bottomless. He is attune to his body and what it’s capable of doing more than any other athlete, he said.
“You know when you have that extra gear?” he said. “He’s a guy that has that big-time gear. There’s not a lot of people around that have that gear.”
Which means competitors, gear up.
