'Our Best Is Your Best'. Training Partners Elevated Him To His First Gold Medal.

David Wilkes (center) with training partners Reggie Mason (left) and Jesse Caudle  following David's gold medal win in the 800 at the USATF Masters Outdoor Championships in July.

By Ray Glier

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.___David Wilkes, 65, came out of the last turn in the 800-meter run at the USATF Masters Outdoor Championships and it looked like he was running alone. He wasn’t.

On one side of Wilkes was Reggie Mason. On the other side of David was Jesse Caudle. They weren't there in the flesh, but they were present in spirit. He used them—in spirit—to overtake the race leader Evan Wykes and run a 2:35.40 and win the race (M65-69) and a gold medal, his first.

That’s what this story is about. To convince you with evidence that training partners matter.

In this age of virtual this and that, scientists in one study examined the benefits of having a “virtually present partner” during workouts. No Zoom allowed, except the type of zoom on the track. Wilkes insists he won that gold medal by training with Caudle, 66, and Mason, 70, a former track standout at Stanford, because they met for months on Sundays at a public track in Decatur, Ga., near their homes.

“I just kicked it in the last 100, and I've got a strong kick,” Wilkes said of the defining moment in the 800 in Huntsville. “That's one of my gifts, which comes a lot from the training I do with my training partners. Reggie's a 400 guy, he’s still fast, so he likes more of the 200-meter type intervals and that’s where I get my speed."

Here are the big takeaways. You just don’t run with a training partner, you and he exert the same effort. You look together toward the same Finish Line.

You also give each other motivation and inspiration.

“Before our last rep at our workouts Reggie always says ‘Last one, best one’,” Wilkes said. “I think it's critical for anybody to have that kind of fellowship with another person when you're training.”

Wilkes ran a pedestrian 84 seconds the first lap, or 400 meters of the 800 at nationals. It adhered to his learned style of running against competitors, not running to achieve a specific time. He was in fifth place with that 1:24, but “the other runners were within sight,” David said of why he didn't change gears too soon.

The second lap was all his. Wilkes ran 71 seconds, an impressive reverse split, and ran down Wykes, who finished in 2:37.08.

It was David’s finishing burst that made the difference. He was upright and strong as he churned the last 100 meters.

His training partner, Mason, who has been ranked as high as No. 4 in the U.S. in the 400, insists he didn’t win a gold medal in the 2022 Masters Outdoor Championships in Lexington, Ky., because Wilkes suffered a grade 2 tear in his left calf in the USATF Indoors in New York in March, 2022. David subsequently had a blood clot in the calf, which stopped his training for the rest of 2022.

“If I had had my training partner the last few months, I probably would have won this race,” Mason said three years ago at the University of Kentucky where he took silver. “I would have been pushed and learned more and won.

“You see, we need each other, David and I.”

That story link in the line above is about how we all need each other, especially now.

Wilkes, who is a retired consulting engineer in the water business, is ranked No. 4 in the U.S. in the 800. He has won three silver medals in USATF national meets, so you can see his skill also means something to Mason and Caudle, an 800 runner.

“We’re all three reasonably close in speed so we push each other and that helps,” David said. “And it gives you confidence that if a race is close at the end, you know what it’s like to be challenged.

“I was really nervous before that race in Huntsville, but it settles your nervousness if you've gone through the training that it takes to run with speed at the end.”

For the harriers reading, David said they found a workout on You Tube by Canadian Marco Arop, the reigning world champion in the 800 meters. David, Reggie, and Jesse made Arop part of the group—virtually—by adopting his robust training, which featured a series of broken 700s, 600s, 500, all with a hard-as-you-can-go 200 at the finish.

Wilkes also gives credit for his gold medal to his Boot Camp crew that meets every Monday, Wednesday at 6 a.m., and Saturday at 7 a.m.. They take each other through body weight exercises. The skill level of each person is varied, but allowances are made for that.

Here is the beauty of that training group, David said.

“One of our mottos is ‘leave no man behind’, and leave no man where you found him,” Wilkes said.

It’s another way of saying your mission is to elevate your training partners.

To that end, Mason and Caudle did their job by elevating Wilkes to a gold medal.