All the high school cross-country meets in the area were cancelled. It was the epitomy of an "inside day." Buckets of rain and ten-foot waves from the Atlantic Ocean crashed against the rocks and submerged parts of the course in more than a foot of water. Forty-five mph winds inverted umbrellas.
Yet one minute before race time, Bowdoin's top 12 runners circled up and shouted "Go U Bears!" at the top of their lungs. Co-captain Tyler Lonsdale shouted "No excuses you guys!!"
The race began and so did the potential excuses.
Archie Abrams '09 lost his shoe one-fifth of the way through the race. Tyler Lonsdale '08 wasn't feeling healthy. Thompson Ogilvie '10 was still feeling the workout from Wednesday. Nate Krah '08 was recovering from sickness.
But the Bowdoin men put those excuses out of their minds and ran a gutsy race to claim second in the NESCACs behind Williams.
Coach Peter Slovenski was especially "proud of how the guys ran in tough conditions."
He was "particularly proud of how Archie came back from his fall. He was in last place at one point of the race, and had only one shoe for most of the race, but came back to finish fifth out of 130 runners."
Recalling a story he will probably be telling the rest of his life, Abrams said, "I lost my shoe when I was clipped in the first 100 and stopped, sat down, and put it back on. During that moment I was just thinking okay, get the shoe back on and everything will be fine."
Then when the shoe really came off 800 meters later Abrams "was just shocked," he said. "It took me a few seconds to realize that I had no shoe on. I was just thinking, I need to get my shoe back and yelled at everyone I saw to get my shoe. The next three miles were a bit of a blur, I was still trying to get my shoe back somehow and was running along slipping and sliding all over the place in the mud and trying to avoid the rocks. When it [occurred to] me that I wasn't going to get my shoe back, I just put my head down and started to really run."
Abrams' shoe was nipped at the beginning of the race but he managed to stay with co-captain Owen McKenna '07 for four miles across gravel and mud in one racing spike and one sock. Abrams even managed to kick at the end and surge from 15th place to fifth place at the end of the race to finish in 26:35.
The weather created an entirely different race. To attest to this, the No. 1 finisher, Trinity's Hunter Norte and No. 2 finisher, Connecticut College's Brian Murtagh, entered the race as big underdogs but used their backgrounds in the steeplechase to finish in 26:13 and 26:26, respectively.
Bowdoin's steeplechasers performed well, too. Junior John Hall's 26:51 performance was good enough for 17th place. Hall finished as Bowdoin's third man behind Abrams and McKenna (26:47), and in front of Ogilvie, who finished 18th in 26:51, and Ken Akiha '07, who ran the race of his life to capture 29th in 27:07.
Hall's strength and background in Nordic skiing and the steeplechase may have helped him power through the deep water and muck. Slovenski "was impressed with the way John Hall excelled in those conditions."
While he was impressed, he was not surprised with Hall's performance.
"This was the kind of day when you needed to be a resilient and resourceful warrior," he said. "John Hall is an outstanding cross-country runner and steeplechaser, but he would be an even better adventure racer climbing mountains, fording rivers, hitching rides, and rescuing other runners. The worse the conditions, the better John does."
Bowdoin has over a week to recharge for the New England Division III race a week from Saturday. This will be the third showdown between Bowdoin and Williams. So far, Bowdoin has one victory, as does Williams, and both teams will be looking to beat the other to clinch the season series.