New York's Finestby Chris Lear Brooklyn-born, Long Island-bred St. John's graduate Chris Graff is a New Yorker to the core. We're talking New York Yankees- and Ray's Pizza-loving New Yorker (his favorite haunt is on 23rd and Lexington-"It's gorgeous," he says). So it's no surprise that as Graff and his wife, Elizabeth, also a New Yorker, relax in their modest apartment one early evening in late April, they are listening to the Yankee gam via the Internet. The Internet? Yes. That's the only way for them to catch the game in their domicile on the left coast in Palo Alto, California. So why are the Graffs 3,000 miles from home? They're chasing a dream that began when Chris graduated from Oceanside High School as one of New York State's finest distance runners in 1993. Upon graduating from Oceanside, Chris contemplated attending schools as far removed from his roots as Houston and North Carolina, but eventually he settled on St. Johns University-hardly a distance running powerhouse-just a stone's throw away in Queens. "It was a unique situation," he says, "with a bunch of local guys who had some success in high school, thinking we could be successful if we stuck together, and trusting that our coach [Jim Hurt] would lead us in a direction that would be productive." Graff steadily progressed his first four years, dropping his 10K PR from 31:27 to 30:30 by the end of his fourth year. Diploma in hand, he could have departed St. John's but he elected to stick it out one more year. He began to work toward a graduate degree in philosophy, meanwhile striving to see if he could make a running breakthrough in his fifth year. "I knew that I hadn't reached my potential yet, so I figured I would dedicate myself to running for at least one more year. At the end of the year I would assess whether it was worth pursuing or not. My coach was also in favor of me sticking it out as long as possible. He definitely felt that my best running was still a couple of years ahead of me." Graff validated Coach Hurt's faith in him when he recorded huge PRs of 13:46 in the 5K for 6th place and 29:12 in the 10K for 10th placeat the 1998 NCAA championships in Buffalo, New York, to earn NCAA All-America honors for the first time. Frank "Gags" Gagliano, coach of the now defunct Reebok Enclave, then the preeminent post-collegiate running club in the country, took note of Graff's improvement and invited him to relocate to Washington, DC, to train with his guys and see if he had what it takes to compete against the world's best. Gags' encouragement was Graff he needed to dedicate the next several years of his life to running, but his times were still a far cry from what he would need to be successful as a professional competing on the track and on the roads against the world's best. Furthermore, shoe contracts, the golden carrot for America's track elite, are awarded to but a select few athletes, so if he were to pursue his running while training twice a day, six days a week, it would have to be on a shoestring budget. Before heading down to DC, Graff and some friends from New York moved to the running Mecca of Boulder, Colorado, for a stint of altitude training. The trip would allow him to focus exclusively on training in order to help make the transition to post-collegiate running a smooth one. One problem: It's mighty tough to make it out in Boulder without money or a car. Enter the "Five Car. " Graff's friends Mike Frazier and Bobby Ostroff arrived at Denver International Airport and immediately took a cab to a Denver auto dealership. They spent the next six hours haggling with a used car dealer for a 1984 Subaru station wagon with no muffler, bringing him down from a thousand dollars to the eventual sale price of two hundred dollars. "That's what happens when you send two New York guys to Denver. They got in the insurance-less, license plate-free mobile and picked me up at the airport." Once in Boulder, "they went and got a sandwich; I went and got an apartment. By sundown we were all moved in. "About a week later some hippie chick was painting her car by the side of the road so we decided to pull over and paint our car. I said to Mike, 'let's put a 5 on the side like the Dukes of Hazzard.' And he said 'No, let's make it an 05.'" Thus, the Five Car-with no radio, no heat or air conditioning, soon no starter, and later no third gear-was born. By the end of the summer it took a team effort to get the Five Car started. Four guys were needed to push the car from one end of the underground garage in their apartment building full blast towards the opposite wall. It was a four-limb process to get the car started for the driver, too. One foot pumping the clutch, the other pumping the gas, one hand on the emergency break to keep from smashing into the wall, and one hand to steer. A smiling Graff says wistfully, "It was four-limb driving at its finest." Once in DC, Graff quickly adjusted to the life of a struggling distance runner. He began training in earnest, sandwiching twice-a-day training sessions between part-time work for a Catholic lobbying organization. Graff struggled to keep pace with the Enclave's seasoned professionals, running "near-maximal effort" on his tempo runs, track workouts and 2-hour Sunday runs. His hard work paid off. Over the following year he qualified and competed for the US squad at the World Cross Country Championships and the World University Games, while dropping his 10,000-meter PR to a national class 28:07. His performances earned him a small training stipend for the Enclave, and together with his part-time job, the money helped him to stay afloat financially, although at the end of each month his bank account languished "below three digits." Nonetheless, Graff decided Wall Street could wait. "I felt I had come far in a short amount of time, and if I could stay the course a little longer, it would all come together for me." He set his sights squarely on making the 2000 US Olympic team. Graff failed to qualify for the Olympic team, finishing a disappointing tenth in the 5K and twenty-second in the 10K. Compounding matters was that soon thereafter the Reebok Enclave folded. Graff found himself at a crossroads. But when Gags relocated to Palo Alto, California, to coach the Nike-funded Farm Team and invited Graff to join him, he and Elizabeth decided to make the move out west. He still doesn't have the ever-elusive shoe contract to put him on solid financial footing, and he's still adjusting to life out west, where "they can't drive, and they want sprouts and guacamole on every god damn thing they eat." However, with the all-encompassing support of the Farm Team, which provides coaching, nutritional analysis, massage therapy, physical testing, and covers travel expenses, and the encouragement and sacrifice of wife Elizabeth, Graff is continuing with his personal quest to fulfill his potential. He hopes that one day he'll discover the answer to the question that's nagged him since his days in Oceanside: How good am I? Recent performances like his 4th place finish in the US 15K road racing championships in Jacksonville, Florida, and a seasonal debut 28:25 10K victory have Graff believing his four-limbed jalopy-driving days may be solidly in the rearview mirror. "I'll tell you this," he says assuredly, "if I can take the survival skills I learned in New York and apply that to the training and coaching I get out here, I think I can take that to any arena and be successful." Spoken like a true New Yorker. _____________
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