FLRC Newsletter - Jun 2003
	Profile of Tom Meyer, Co-Winner of The 2002-03 Hartshorne Memorial Volunteer Award

Name: Thomas (Tom) Meyer
DOB: May 3, 1975
Age: 28
Address: 700 Warren Rd Apt 20-3F, Ithaca, NY
(Have lived in Ithaca for 7 years now.)

Job(s):
Graduate student in physics at Cornell, working on a PhD in experimental particle physics. Same lab where John Hylas works, and my thesis research is actually closely related to work Scott Roberts (a past High Nooner) did when he was in Ithaca 10 years ago. Research work keeps me busy most days, and daily running is one of the ways I break away for a change of pace during hectic days. My particular research area is pretty specialized, but I find it very exciting and well worth the time I've had to put into it. In one sentence, the work I do is focused on measuring some of the fundamental properties of sub-atomic particles to test our current understanding of nature, and maybe even identify an inconsistency that means, as is typical in science, that our picture so far has only been approximate. Right now, it looks like I have about another year's worth of research and writing left before the project will be complete.

Club duties:
I've been webmaster of the FLRC website since June 2001 when I took it over from friend Craig Caylor who was graduating. Since then, I've worked to make the site even more navigable and useful, with occasional cosmetic upgrades to keep the site presentable. Day-to-day operation of the website includes posting results of FLRC races, providing access to race information and entry forms, translating the monthly newsletter into web-readable form, listing local races on a race calendar web page, keeping links up-to-date, and trying to post news relevant to the local running community.

One of the challenges in web site management (besides keeping things simply up-to-date) is organizing information. The web in general offers a wealth of information: so much, in fact, that it's typically almost useless unless cross-references and links organize it into some usable form. So in addition to simply adding kilobytes of data to the web a few times a week, I also try to add it in ways that users will find natural, constructive, and usable. In my experiences, ease of maintenance is more influenced by the design and layout of the website than the actual content or frequency of information updates!

In addition to webmaster duties, I also managed the results for the indoor track meets for the 2001-2 and 2002-3 seasons, and was part of the organizing committee for the Board retreat held in March 2003.

Marital status:
Married, since Oct 1999 to wife Janis, whom I've known for 10 years now. (We met in college.)

Children: -none-

Height: 5'10" Weight: 155 lbs. Shoe size: 12

Best (and worst) feature (physical):
Reckless abandon on trails or indoors, working on our 2-story experimental apparatus, where I've been known to slither behind immovable objects, climb onto uncertain footing, and be a little incautious. So far, no real injuries other than a lot of cuts and bruises, a long history of falls during trail races, and a fractured wrist during Madness several years ago.

Educational background:
High school at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy ("IMSA") inAurora, IL, outside Chicago, a public residential high school. Graduated 1992. B.S. in Physics, Caltech, Pasadena, CA in 1996. Graduate school at Cornell immediately afterward, Summer '96, with Ph.D. in particle physics expected by spring '04.

Favorite book:
Many. Lately, I've really been absorbed by Barbara Kingsolver.

Favorite actor/actress:
Many. Julia Ormond, Kirsten Scott Thomas, Susan Sarandon, Ed Harris, Michael Caine, Robert DeNiro.

Favorite music:
trance, eurodance, pop, 80's, depending on circumstances and mood

Favorite musical performer:
Anything Box, Erasure, Aqua, Savage Garden, Tori Amos, ...

Hobbies/Collections:
Few, outside miles and trail scars. Unmaintained stamp collection from childhood. Wine-tasting a growing pastime, starting to really explore German Rieslings, which both my wife and I enjoy immensely. (We take most of our advice from the experts at Northside.)

Make of vehicle you drive: VW Passat

Make of vehicle you'd like to drive: new BMW Z4, or the Audi All-Road for getting to some of the most inaccessible trails in the area

Favorite spectator sport:
Track, basketball, but I watch them only very rarely. I like cheering in-person at meets.

Favorite non-running leisure activity:
Reading, wine-sampling, house-cleaning

Favorite item of clothing you own:
Thor-lo socks won in a 5&10 race several years ago

Most prized possession:
My thesis research notebooks!

Personal philosophy:
Things are far more complicated than they seem from the outside (from politics to research) and there is never a single, simple cause-effect explanation for anything. But that doesn't mean individual actions can't effect change or have value.

Short-term goal:
Catch Tim Ingall at some distance on the trails. Complete my thesis research. (This is the longest I've worked on one thing for a long time.)

Long-term goal:
Develop as a runner and a learner.

Achievements of which you are most proud:
Helping build key portions of the experiment at the lab. Marrying my wife. Setting and reaching my marathon goals last fall.

Favorite subject in school:
physics, no surprise. Most others also interesting.

Pets:
Two rather overweight cats, 8 yrs old, who are aggressive to each other but timid around almost anything else, whether it be new furniture or new people.

Happiest memory:
Uncontrollable, silly grin as we walked out of the chapel on our wedding day.

Secret ambition/fantasy:
That someone else will actually read my thesis, maybe even think about the person who wrote it

Personal strengths:
Independence, skepticism, belief in power of asking the right questions, endurance

Personal weaknesses:
Insensitivity to personal mental/physical pain (more likely, laziness to do anything about it)

Tom cruisin' in the 2001 Boilermaker.

Years running:
10 this spring. First spotted by track coach in college, who also taught a badminton class I was taking for PE requirements. He says that once he noticed I was hard to tire on the badminton court (I wasn't the most skilled of players), he knew I was good material for a long-distance runner. He recruited me to try track that spring (my freshman year), and I was hooked by the end of the season, running cross-country and track every season after that. The trails in the San Gabriel mountains a few miles north of Pasadena are what really grabbed me, and helped turn running from a seasonal activity into a lasting part of my life.

PR's:
Mile:              4:50.4 (1996)
5 K:              16:35    (1996)
10K:             38:12    (1999)
15 K:            56:45    (2000)
10 mi:          61:38    (1999)
Marathon: 2:51:01    (2002)

Best running performance:
On the Daniels' charts, I think the mile and 15 K rank the highest. My fastest times are from my track days in college, but I think my more recent longer-distance races, especially on trails, rank as superior races.

Most memorable running performance:
After conference finals in my senior year of college, I ran one leg of the Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon held in Griffths Park in LA. I was anchor runner on a slow team, and so was running against hundreds of other slow runners. It made for a very relaxed and enjoyable run to cruise by so many other athletes, and yet we were all in it together for a common, charitable cause. Another good memory is from a tough 5 K on the track in college, when only four of us started the race, and two dropped out after the first mile, using the race just as a cool-down, but still leaving me in the dust. Nonetheless, I kept going at my target pace and finished on schedule. Later, I learned the coach of the other runners was impressed by my perseverance and even effort after his runners had dropped out.

More fond memories come from an event the track team organized at the end of each school year around Memorial Day weekend: a 24-hour relay event on the track, with teams of all sorts turning out from the relatively small student body. One year, we had a 10-person team that was too fast, so that there was too little time to recover between legs. Running a sub-6:00 mile every 50 min proved too much for some, and we lost several runners in the first 8 hours. Eventually, we reached a stable configuration of about 6 runners, where some of us would run hard, but then be given ample rest by others who had chosen to walk, or juggle, or hop their miles. The arrival of dawn the next morning was always an uplifting moment, and for a few minutes, our accomplishments seemed larger than life.

Typical training week before a major race:
6 days of running, with 2 days or speed or hills, a long road or trail run (10+ miles). For last fall's marathon, I think I made it up to about 55 miles/week, which is about the most I could handle at the time.

Injuries:
Occasional IT band trouble, in both knees. My first running-related injury involved my right IT band near the end of my first season running as a freshman. Being new to the sport, I had no idea what was wrong, and had to rely on the coach and trainer's assurance that the problem could indeed be treated and healed.

I not-quite fractured my right wrist in a bad spill at the Virgil Mt Madness in 1998. At the same race last year (different course), I twisted my right ankle pretty severely, something that I've always shrugged off before. However, careful training and braces allowed me to continue preparations for the NYC marathon.

Last December began a long, slow ordeal with some ambiguous patellar-femoral pain in my right knee that seems at last to have cleared up after a lot of physical therapy, cross-training, ice and Advil.

Favorite race:
Forest Frolic 15 K. It's the ideal trail distance that requires navigating technically challenging trail obstacles at serious speed. I love the long hills in the first loop, and the challenging footing of the second. I'm not quite as strong on uphills as downhills, and this course seems to match my recovery cycle quite well, so that I can take full advantage of the downhill stretches when I get to them.

Buttermilk, Danby, and the Triennial also rank high on my list.

Favorite running shoes:
Flexible trail shoes, ideally Adidas Estes, which seem to have gone out of production. I like Adidas nowadays, but my first shoes and true loyalties lie with Asics.

Favorite place to train:
I like the Virgil trails, since there are a lot of options, but typically I run the much-closer Cayuga Trail that runs from the Cornell Plantations north to Rt 13.

Favorite running surface:
Trail. Sand is fun since it's challenging and requires a different stride, but only as a rare workout. CA trails are different than NY trails, typically much steeper but not quite as shaded and root-y. I like both.

Favorite running weather: 45 degrees, cloudy, maybe some light rain.

What local friend/training partner has had the most positive influence on you and why?
My track and cross-country coach in college, Jim O'Brien, had the single largest effect on my running goals and experience. An avid and nationally-ranked ultra-runner, we ran on and through all conditions, and he demonstrated the positive ways running can influence other areas of life. After transplanting to Cornell, I struggled to continue running on my own, but managed to join up with fellow graduate student Craig Caylor for several years, who inspired me to try to return the running condition I had once been in. Most recently, the High Noon crew at Cornell has provided the motivation and feedback to give me the strength and determination to steadily improve and reach new heights.

Why do you run?
Being able to count on something each day helps me stay motivated and relaxed during the day. Regular running often increases my productivity and performance---in the days before my wedding, and before my PhD candidacy exam, my mileage increased, but so did my focus. Doing something "completely different" (preferably in a group) gives me a much-needed rest from the intense world of research and lab work.

And I love the competition and sense of accomplishment that comes from racing. I'm not out to beat everyone, but to best and better myself. Competing against others helps that, and gives me a standard against which to judge my relative performance.

And there's a certain thrill in being good at something, even if it's not world-class. I like knowing my body is more than just a bag of bones and flesh, knowing that it's been trained into a well-developed machine capable of sometimes-astonishing feats (and falls!).

Any advice for other runners?
Start small, and look for the simple pleasures. If you ever doubt, take a week off and see if you miss anything. Most likely, you will, and therein lies the answer. Running has become a part of your life.

Tom (left) in a cross-country race, September 2002.