Apart from being a talented designer, our own Steven Kutsch is an amateur mountaineer, recovering Red Bull addict, and Saw aficionado. And not too long ago, he was pretty quick on his feet.
Kutsch started running in the third grade. He lost only one race during his seventh-grade cross country and track seasons. As a sophomore at Mead High School, he was a member of the cross country team that took fifth at nationals; they were state champions his junior year. By the end of Kutsch’s high school career, he’d set a personal record of 4:14 in the mile.
At the University of Oregon, Kutsch ran the steeplechase; at Sacramento state, the 1,500 and steeplechase; at EWU, “pretty much whatever I wanted.” His 1,500 PR? 3:54—a 4:12.4 mile.
So it should come as no surprise that this news isn’t sitting all that well with him. That’s right, folks: Last week, Sifan Hassan became the first woman to beat Kutsch’s mile record—and she did it by seven-hundredths of a second. (NB: The title of this post was suggested by Kutsch himself, who’s been spending most of his time since the news broke curled up in the fetal position under his desk.)
All of which is just a prelude to the real point of this blog post: We’re getting weaker as a species.
