Jim Amidon — Roger Busch has almost never turned down a challenge.
The head coach of Wabash’s cross country team and assistant coach of the track team was known as daredevil of sorts when he was a Wabash undergraduate in the mid-1990s.
It wasn’t uncommon for Coach Busch — and his best friends Jeremy Wright and Scott Gall — to run a dozen miles, bicycle 20-30 miles, and then play ultimate or water ski or wrestle — all in the same day.
I fondly remember the ferocity with which the "Three Amigos" approached cross country running, which I always figured as a docile, individual event. Those guys were off the charts in their training — and in their lives.
They moved to Colorado every summer to work crummy jobs and run 70-100 miles per week in high altitude and race their mountain bikes. Back in Indiana, I once waterskied with them at 6:30 in the morning — after they had run 10 miles to get to the lake. When we were done and each of them had a couple of classic crashes, they ran another 10 miles back to their campsite. (Busch took a short, 40-mile bike ride that same day, as I recall.)
Later that same year, Busch and his teammates booked a perfect score at the Great Lakes Regional (taking the top five places) and finished third at the National Championships. Even in a field of hundreds of runners, Busch stood out — he had dyed his hair Raggedy Ann orange just for the national meet.
Fifteen years after becoming an All-American in cross country and track, Busch continues to push the limits of his body.
Last weekend, he ran in the first-ever Southern Indiana Classic Half Marathon and finished first in a time of 72 minutes. Busch was interviewed after the race and in typical fashion, gave the reporter an “aw, shucks” interview. He said he was just putting in the miles and ran the race to see where he was in his training.
He literally ran away from the competition — nobody else was close.
And I’m guessing he put in a few more miles that way, just for kicks.
