(Featuring Dave “MF” Ross)
The pinnacle is always slippery; no peak is safe.
Only a plateau offers a place to rest.
Are you ready to stay on a plateau or are you climbing?
Decide and pack your bags accordingly. - Gina Barreca
PROLOGUE, which I only thought of later. Reader’s notes. On assignment for one of the world’s truly great magazines – not just running – Mystical Miles. Got my beard professionally trimmed for this. Traveling sans spouse, her being the brains of the outfit; she also does the heavy lifting and eyes my six. Almost finished with a biographical tome about a tall, craggily handsome Zen master/writer whose wanderlust took him into the depths of the unknown. Like Leon County. Shuffled and sat and shuffled and sat, trying to be one with everything. Medicated up to my eyeballs. Thinking nobody could possibly be having a better time than me, except maybe Dave “MF” Ross.
I packed my bags. And my cane. Started out 0900 Friday and I was back at Dog Cabin high noon Sunday. That’s fifty-one hours, if my math is correct. Somehow managed to be ‘in the moment’ the entire time, which is exhausting. Think Karl Ove Knausgard with material for four novels.
Story starts earlier, as all stories do.
January, 2025, last year, I get a text from a high school distance coach, famed for his attention to detail, as all great coaches must be. He’s already made a hotel reservation at a great rate for the 2026 World Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee, Florida. Apparently, the local hotels are as yet unaware of Big Event.
March, I decide to book my own stay and by now of course the hotel has heard the news. Nightly rate doubled – no cancellation. Pre-paid.
Summer. Too early to apply for press credentials. Finally, it’s time. You apply, grateful they didn’t ask for a blood sample and await notification of accreditation. Time passes. Nothing. You ask around. Nothing. Make a deal with Dave “MF” Ross – ‘the moment you hear, let me know.’ Nothing.
Then, Dave “MF” Ross announces he’s good to go.
When your first feature article appeared in Runner’s World, Dave “MF” Ross was in the third grade. More nothing. Time to go Old School.
You are probably familiar with the Six Degrees of Wild Dog. That’s the ‘small world theory’ where I can somehow connect with everybody in the running universe. I can try at least. Call a retired coach who provides an email address of the event’s Co-Chair who points me to the press honcho who “!00% guarantees” I WILL get a credential. Turns out Jeff knows Tom, who gave me marital advice in 1980.
Three lefts – with a stop in Chiefland for some soothing chocolate elixir at Micky D’s, only to be told ‘milkshake machine is broke’ – and a half tank of gas get me to the world-famous Apalachee Regional Park, site of arguably the World’s Best Cross-Country venue. Where I meet another old coach who holds my bag while a nice man photographs John Welch’s prematurely balding head. Feel like I am in disguise.
Victory is mine! John’s.
Traditionally, historically, for decades even, you show up at a major meet and all your favorite buddies are there from all the other meets and you yak about the time you almost got in a fight cause the opposing school took an unauthorized shortcut and that was not even the worst of it. (In case you wondered why none of our wives came along.)
No classic klatch in 2026. No way, Jose. In and out. Move along, please. Zero lingering. Dang. I was hoping to shoot a grey gloved fist into the sky at the first mention of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Police presence, albeit pleasant, was ubiquitous. See photo below.
Ha! I’d thought ahead and suggested the team meet at the Canopy Road Cafe – “A Taste of Florida Comfort” – just down the road. We didn’t go there. We went past the State Capitol, through downtown past massage parlors and Tattoo While You Wait and vape shops. Turns out there are five (5) Canopy Road Cafes. Attention to detail, my bad. https://www.canopyroadcafe.com/menu
Don’t have my own GPS, so I follow “OG” in his little classic Mercedes convertible. We have a great chat. Just the two of us. We are lifelong friends who only recently met; over a century and a half combined years of “you did what?”
I find talking with coaches quite therapeutic at times. So full of solutions. Promise to ask my wife to put a directional app on my phone. In the late Sixties, I toured Europe with a globe. Follow OG to my hotel where he drops me off. I’d be lost without him.
The Not Fit For The Media Marriott looks at my pained shuffle and my cane and gives me Room 069, which is at the very farthest reaches of the building. When I finally get to my door, it’s propped open, like a trap. Ground-level, with sliding glass doors. The first place an insane killer is gonna look. Closing the drapes tight, I spy a Trump/Pence bumper sticker on an SUV, big enough to hold many dead bodies.
Can’t miss the Oregon versus Indiana College Football Playoff game at 7:30, so sixish I am sitting on a hard chair in a sports bar with forty-four (44) televisions. Maybe a half dozen coaches at our table. Big TVs, which makes the pain for a Fightin’ Duck fan even greater. Two beers with dinner, substitute broccoli for the fries. Famed author at my elbow offers me the last bite of his Bourbon Butter Cake (1074 calories). Lord, it’s loud here. Hoosier supporters understandably ecstatic. Glory Daze, my ass.
Trouble sleeping. In my dreams, I am alone. Abandoned. No phone, no cane. Wobbly and lost. Hear a voice, sounds like Liev Schreiber, tell me to get one of those computerized globes. Don’t drive at night, not even in my wildest dreams.
Saturday. 0830. Head to the venue, traffic is backed up and we can’t help noticing roadside a large cardboard box nobody else notices. Probably not an IED, we all agree.
Left behind again. Half century later, I am still the slowest.
Texts flood in. “Where are you?” A couple years ago, these same coaches taught me to text.
My buddies are looking to spend the next few hours on their feet in the sun. Not me. Between the Mixed Zone, where working journalists with good knees scurry after quotes and selfies with stars, and the VIP tent, where organizers’ friends and sponsors’ children hoot and holler and whine, there’s an unshaded deck with a secure railing, a sturdy chair and a veritable panorama.
“I’m here.” Pretty good view, huh?
Not much to say about the actual competition really. Every event went exactly as I might have predicted. NOBODY sane picks the U20 results. Although I couldn’t help wondering about their college eligibility and how much NIL money would be needed to podium at the NCAAs. Would seven hundred thousand dollars gather a championship XC team, I wondered.
Did hope the USA’s Nico Young – fellow NAU alum – would have placed higher. Watched Nico come around on the first lap and he seemed spent already. “He always looks like that,” someone said. Heat and humidity high for this time of year. The race already lost, the chanting starts: “USA! USA!! USA!!” Parker Wolfe is America’s Sweetheart of the moment. Wolfe was 12th, the best finish by an American male since 2017.
The wind changes and I smell chocolate chips at the media tent, so I hurry over, so to speak, just in time to watch Craig Virgin have his makeup applied. He was too shiny. “You realize I am the only writer who will have this exclusive,” I tell him. “You are still a very handsome man.” Craig won the World Cross Country Championships TWICE. 1980 and 1981. Free bottled water.
Back at my observation post, who bounds up to greet me, but Dave “MF” Ross. We are both excited to be here together in the sun with eight to ten thousand other cross-country fanatics. The general BMI was a quarter of the national average. Made him promise to tell me about his weekend soon as he got back to Portland.
Dave “MF” Ross’ Weekend Went Like This
Thursday 1/8: Wake at 4am Leave house at 4:35am Arrive at economy parking at PDX at 5:10am Arrive at terminal at 5:30am. Through security at 5:45. Flight leaves the gate at 6:30am on the nose. Arrive in Jacksonville around 4:45pm and procure rental car. Drive to Tallahassee (with a stop around halfway at Burger King for a double cheeseburger and a chocolate shake) and arrive in Tallahassee around 8:15pm. Catch up with my friend (and roommate for the weekend) Jordan and grab some food at the hotel. Finally crash around midnight.
Friday 1/9: Alarm goes off at 7am. Grab some breakfast at the hotel. Drive out to the bike path and run 4 miles with Jordan. Back to hotel. Shower and head to site. 10:30 am procure media credential and 11am press conference. Friday afternoon at hotel talking to athletes. Friday night dinner and make a video to enter World Majors contest to run all of the WMM races. Finally crash around midnight.
Saturday 1/10: Alarm at 7am Grab some breakfast in the hotel dining area 8am bus out to course. Meet up with friends. Watch races from media tent and bop over to mixed zone to do post race interviews with athletes. Post interviews to YouTube and social media Arrive back at hotel in the late afternoon and am dragging ass tired. Grab some dinner at the hotel dining area and meet up with a bunch of athletes at the hotel (including Kenenisa Bekele) Finally crash around midnight.
Sunday 1/11: Alarm goes off at 7 Grab a quick breakfast at the hotel dining area My buddy Anteneh drives me out to the course. Arrive 9:15am Warm up and check in. Race 10K from 10:15-11:03. Change out of sweaty clothes with no warm down and meet my friends at noon to drive to Jacksonville. Arrive Jacksonville around 2:30pm for 4:30 pm flight. Arrive back in PDX around 10:15. Drop my friend off at her car and drive home. Finally back home at 11:45pm and do some unpacking before getting to bed at 12:45am.
Monday 1/12 7:45am Back at my “regular” job.
College students anxious to become freelance running sportswriters should not judge the profession by MY current actions, or inaction, as the case may be. It’s damn hard work. Done right, done the way Dave “MF” does, the way this work must be done if the integrity of our sport is to survive – no, THRIVE – we need more like Dave “MF” Ross.
So, I am sitting there between the media and the VIPs, feeling like both and neither, absorbing EVERYTHING. Strangers with smiles interrupt my meditation and ask what I think about the WAC XC Championships in Tallahassee, Florida, USA and all I can say, it’s wonderful.
Imagine what it must be like to be twenty years younger with GPS and computer skills and super shoes. And zeal.
It was wonderful even if you just sat there. At peace in one place. Full of wonder.
After hours of standing in the sun, everybody wants to grab a beer or two or three and rehash what they just watched. I want to nap. And that is the last I see of anybody. This old dog in no shape for the post-race party. Turned around three times and curled up in Room 069. On ESPN ten identical-looking athletes leap around all night. Saw a Kalshi advertisement on television. What are the odds of that? and slept ’til dawn.
Imagined what a great time Dave “MF” Ross had. I have plateaued, he’s still climbing. Face it, you can be Zen as shit, but you can still be jealous. Two good knees + GPS, and he’s only fifty-eight.
“I think most of my colleagues think this is the best cross-country course in the world,” Sir Seb Coe said. “I think it’s probably safe to say we are in the cross country capital of the United States, if not the world.”
Coe knows. At least he thinks he does. Probably.
Decided to ask somebody who might verily know for a stone cold fact. Bob Braman is the retired Florida State University Cross-Country Coach. Another detail guy. I know HIS coach, to give you some idea. Bob goes way back, all the way, re the creation of Arguably The Greatest XC Course In The World. I need some words from you, I said.
“My contribution was a shared and small one. My running buddy Brian Corbin and I cut the original Boy Scout trail, then we helped guide Leon County in the development of the layout. At Worlds, my role was to coordinate course security and spectator flow.”
Coordinated, secure and flowing. Golly, what could be better. That’s what we all want, isn’t it? Coordinated, secure and flowing. Anybody asks you what the event was like, tell them that.
Bidding Process Launched For 2029 WAC XC Championships
World Athletics is pleased to announce the launch of the bidding processes for the following World Athletics Series event: 2029 World Athletics Cross Country Championships
The launch follows earlier communication with World Athletics member federations, who were informed of the forthcoming bidding process in advance of the year-end period.
The World Athletics Cross Country Championships remains the pinnacle of off-road running, designed to highlight the character and landscape of the host city through technically challenging courses and distinctive terrain. Staged as a one-day event, the championships feature approximately 550 athletes from about 52 countries with opportunities to incorporate memorable mass participation races.
As global interest in off-road and endurance running continues to grow, the World Athletics Cross Country Championships offers host cities a powerful platform to promote active tourism, forge new strategic partnerships and showcase their natural and urban environments to a worldwide audience.
Bid guides for each event, including hosting requirements and impact data from previous editions, are now available on the World Athletics website.
The deadline for submission of pre-qualification forms for the 2029 World Cross Country Championships, is 3 April 2026. Full bid process timelines are also available on the World Athletics website.
VisitTallahassee.com, did you get all that?
Hope so. A bunch of old coaches have sworn to try to stay alive until then. We will try, damn it. We will.
But you better make it as early in the year as possible, if you know what I mean.
*That is Sheriff Walt McNeil and Undersheriff Argatha Gilmore. Two charmers. CFO Elise Gann was there, too. Also charming. Gratitude for graciousness must go to Bob Braman, Taylor Wheaton, Jeff Oliver, Roy Benson, Dave Rinehart, Bob Rosen and Ryals Lee, Jr. And many many good-natured volunteers. Thank you.
