The Legend Of Mark Wetmore Grows: Mark Wetmore Reveals His Pre-Race Fears

by LetsRun.com
November 21, 2013

In anticipation of Saturday’s NCAA Men’s Cross Country championships, we reached out and interviewed the coaches of the top three men’s team’s – Eric Heins of #1 NAU, Dave Smith of #2 Oklahoma State and Mark Wetmore of #3 Colorado.

We contacted Wetmore, who we’ve known since 1999 or 2000 after our good friend Chris Lear wrote Running With The Buffaloes about Wetmore’s 1998 squad, via email on Wednesday.

In reply, we got far from your standard, dry, reveal nothing email. Instead we got a tongue-in-cheek response that will go down in LetsRun.com lore as a must read.

Our email to Wetmore, whose first name is actually Charles we learned, and his reply appear below.

From: ****** On Behalf Of Robert Johnson

Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 12:35 PM
To: Charles M Wetmore
Subject: Interview request LetsRun.com

Mark,
Robert Johnson of LetsRun.com.
Hope you are excited for Saturday and doing well. We are trying to get up our NCAA men’s preview before we fly out tmw and are were hoping to get five minutes of your time to get some insight.Do you have 5 minutes to spare? My cell is ***-***-****.

Your team is being viewed as an NCAA title contender. How is this even possible? How are you in the hunt when you only return one guy from the top 40 and he was 39th last year and only have one sub-14 guy on the team?

You’re right! What was I thinking! We’re gonna get killed! I better change our race plan.

How confident are you? What makes you confident about your team’s chances??

Well I was confident before, but what a fool! Good thing you disabused me. Is that the word?

What are you most concerned about?

Guantanamo, today. Tomorrow I will be concerned with plane crashes. Friday with food poisoning. Saturday, that the alarm doesn’t go off.

Does your team have a #1 guy? It seems as if the top spots have been changing.

Yeah, in fact we have three or four #1 guys.

Wetmore (l), pictured here with Ed Torres in 2003, and the Buffs aren’t strangers to XC success

Are you as good as you were at Pac 12s or should some of that domination be credited to you guys being adjusted to altitude??

I think it is fair to presume we had some advantage at our elevation.

Yeah, I did see that result. Our game plan was to make sure we advanced, preferably not having to wait until Monday to hear. Yes, I was definitely going all out, I am still sore from running back and forth screaming stupid stuff.

Well, I had planned to send them right up front, 4:20 through the Mile. But You saved us. Now I’ll have to figure out something else.

More: More: *Interview with Coach Eric Heins of #1 NAU
*Interview with Coach Dave Smith of #2 Ok State
*2013 NCAA Cross Country Championships Coverage Page
Vault: 2012 NCAA Cross-Country Coverage