Lewis made extreme transition into long-distance running

By: Ed Weaver, The Record

ALBANY - From long-haired, day-wasting skateboarder to an All-conference cross country runner.
That's a fair description of himself says St. Rose runner Brad Lewis.

The former Troy High trickster considered himself an athlete - "I was a skateboarder," he says - when some decent mile times in gym class prompted him to go out for the track team.

He tells the story. "I had never run at all," Lewis began. "In middle school, (track) coach Dennis Wood over at Troy High was my gym teacher in eighth grade. I ran a mile (in class) one day and basically, I ran it so fast, he thought, 'there's no way this kid ran a mile in that
time,' so he made me do it again. I did. It wasn't amazingly fast but for a young kid ...

"Basically, I was a skateboarder and I had long hair and everything and he just figured I couldn't do that. He probably thought I smoked all the time. So, I ran the mile in 6:00 flat and I did it again and I just broke 6:00-5:59 and some.

"So, he asked my friend and to join the track team," Lewis continued, "and basically, I just joined because I had nothing better to do."

Troy miler Matt Miller, who ran in the mid-5:30s, inspired Lewis.

"I was fascinated by him," Lewis said. "So, I wanted to try to run the mile as fast as he did."

Area track followers know, most milers from Troy High and other Big 10 schools usually don't measure up to the top times around Section II and certainly aren't up to college
standards.

And Lewis never did catch Miller.He did move on to longer distances, though.

"Dennis Wood was the high school cross country coach, so I just started running cross country," Lewis said. "It evolved. The first year, I sure wasn't amazing, 20 minutes for a 5K. Second year, I was 18 minutes - I barely broke it, 17:59 at the Saratoga Course."

During his junior season, Lewis is routinely under 17:10, including a few 17:05s and, "that's why colleges started recruiting me," he said, "because 17:05 is a decent time, not amazing, but decent.

"Basically, I've kept doing it because I nothing better to do - and itwas fun," Lewis said of cross country running.

"It was something to do after school (he'd outgrown skateboarding) that was enjoyable," he added.

Lewis doesn't really believe he was born with outstanding endurance.

"Not really," he said. "And in comparison to other distance runners, I don't have very much talent at all. I guess, what could have been (an endurance) key for me was skateboarding.

"My friends and I would skateboard at Hudson Valley Plaza (near HVCC) about 12 hours a day during the summer," Lewis said. "We'd get up about 10 (a.m.) and skateboard all around the area until 10(p.m). That's all that we did.

"You can imagine," he continued, "if you're balancing yourself on one leg on a skateboard, your muscles in your core are holding you up and you're pushing yourself with the other leg, your body has to work a lot. So, a lot of my friends and I, we grew up with a pretty good amount of endurance because we would skateboard all day long. "That's the only thing I can think would develop my talent."

That talent was good enough to win him All-Northeast 10 Conference First Team honors in both 2005 and 2006, a Third Team mention this year.

Lewis has been the Golden Knights' top finisher in each of their meets and has won two invitational events, at both St. Rose and Bryant College.

Lewis says that he lacks a finishing kick, so to win a race, or finish a spot or two higher than he's seeded, he has to "make people hurt."

"I don't have a lot of closing speed," he said, "but I can make people hurt. So, I have to use that and if I don't use that, they're just going to outkick me. If they're not hurting, because they're keeping up with, they're probably going to outkick me. I know that from just knowing me."

In one of his victories, a competitor whom Lewis had cramped up with his fast start in an earlier meet, "stood right with me. He was going to run my pace, and then at the end, outkick me. That was his method. So, the only way I was going to drop him was to just pick up the pace, make it hurt, make him get a cramp or something.

"So, right around four miles, the method at that point, or four and-half miles, is to turn your head real quick to see what kind of distance I had on him. A lot of people say, 'don't look back, don't look back' but it I have a half-mile to go, I need to know what kind of push I need to make, 'cause if I have 100 meters to go and he's close by me, he's just going to blow by me. Don't look back then but a half-mile to go, I just check."

Lewis is on a five-year Masters of Business Administration at St. Rose. He carries a 3.92 grade point average, is a two-time Northeast-10 First Team All-Academic selection, is an NE-10 Commissioner's Honor Roll Gold Scholar, runs his own lawn care-masonry business and tutors for business and accounting students.

Not bad for a skateboarder.