Project 56
After Eli 25.0s time trial on Saturday, in an attempt to break my 1979 family record (57.0) in the quarter mile, Project 56 has a new name.
It's now Project 50.
There was no question, after a single month of speed training, that he would break my record. He told me the day before that he expected to run below 55 seconds.
We had a long conversation before I told him this at the end.
"By the way, I've hand-timed your race," I said.
"Hand-timed? Before I've even run?" he asked, laughing.
"Exactly," I said. "I already saw the outcome."
"What'd I run?" he asked.
"57.1," I said, and he burst out laughing.
I told C the night before that he was going to run 53.9. I know what happens when he's competing. He turns on a gear almost no one else has.
As it turned out, he didn't run 53.9.
He ran 53.5.
I saw two videos, both recorded poorly by his friends, and both only covering very small snippets of the race. I could tell, though, that this form still isn't very good. He's just burning through on raw speed, which means has has a huge amount of room for improvement.
I told him he might have run the fastest quarter mile time of any college hockey goalie in history, and he laughed and said it was certainly a possibility.
His real plan, now that he's talked to the friend on the track team who helped him train, is to come back from Columbia (and a year at an Ivy League school I can't specify yet, where he'll be working with one of the very best people in the world in his field) and join the track team.
His friend said he believes that with a year of proper training, he could break 50 seconds. This is important because it would mean he'd quality for a "full blue" in a second Oxford sport, which is extremely rare. He already has one for hockey, so pulling off the hockey-track double would be both incredibly unlikely. He doesn't think it's ever been done before.
I'm not betting against him.
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