Thursday, October 22, 2015

When the student becomes the teacher

Those who have followed my blog for a while know that my friend Leo and I often race together.  We have been doing it for close to 10 years.  But not many people know the true story of how it all started.  We became friends as a result of being neighbors.  However, Leo used to smoke, and I would refuse to hang out with him when he smoked.  This led to some weird nights where Leo would go outside to smoke and leave me at the bar.  Finally, I said to him that if we were going to hang out, then he would have to stop smoking.  He reluctantly agreed.  But over time he started to get healthier and began to run.  At first it was just a mile or so, but it ultimately we did our first Half Marathon together in Baltimore, and have built on it for the past 10 years.  Over time, it has been half marathons, marathon, triathlons, etc

That is a very general synopsis of our race history.  Why is that important, really it's not.  But to say how impressed I am with him is an understatement.  Leo basically turned his life around and is (almost) just as active as me.

Now Leo has become the teacher.  He has taken my lead and next week he is running the NYC Marathon for the 2nd time (maybe 3rd, I can't remember). But this year will be completely different.  He now is running with a friend from college for his first marathon.  Leo has taken everything that I have taught him and is using it to help coach his buddy.  In fact, Leo is taking it a step further and running the entire race at his friends pace.  Something that I have never done with Leo.  It takes a lot to slow down and run at someone else's pace, but Leo understands the importance of making sure his friend gets the training he needs, and that he enjoys his first NYC Marathon experience.

As a result of this great thing Leo is doing, Mizuno got hold of his story and is sponsoring both Leo and his friend for the marathon experience.  Leo has always asked me about my partnerships, but now he has this great opportunity as well.  Leo and his friend, Doug get to see what it's like to be pampered throughout race week.  Much like I did for Timex last year, they are filming spots of them running in NY, getting free shoes/gear, having a nice pre-race dinner, and some more great things.

Since, I feel like a proud papa, I wanted to help share Leo's story and experience this week.  I'll continue to post his link over the week leading up to the race and show his progress, pictures, videos, etc.  Though I am a proud Skora users and will be wearing them for my NYC Marathon (and for every run that I will ever do), this is Leo's first experience of getting some type of sponsorship, so I want share his excitement as well

Great job Leo.


Full video of Leo's journey


Nice shot of Leo's leg's and new Mizuno shoes



1 comment:

  1. THANKS COACH!!! Clearly you did a good job ;-) All this will not be possible if it wasn't for you... thank you Jared!!!

    ReplyDelete