Gould has been coach of the Hurricanes for 18 years, but a few years before that, he set out on an incomprehensible quest.
Chris Gould has been passing on wisdom to Amherst Regional runners since 1995.
Imagine running a marathon – 26 miles, 385 yards.
Now imagine doing four miles more, just for the heck of it.
Now ... imagine doing that just about every day for four months.
Imagine all that, and you might get a mind-boggling idea of what Chris Gould, an Amherst Regional High School faculty member, accomplished in 1991, at the age of 25.
His “Chris Across America” run – covering 13 states and 3,000 miles – raised $20,000 for cancer research. The real point of it, though, had to do with Gould’s unabashed passion for running, and the need to give himself an adventure he would never forget.
“I had a sentimental love for running, and doing it across America presented a challenge I thought I could handle. It offered an adventure at a time when I felt well suited to try it – not married, with all factors in my life properly aligned,” he said.
He could take comfort in the knowledge that cross-country runs had been done before.
“I think by now, it’s been done by about 400 people,” he said. “Those ultra-marathoners can do 70 miles a day,” Gould said.
Now 47 and a successful coach of cross country and track at the high school he attended, Gould uses his run across America as a teaching tool, both with his teams and with students in his history classes.
“I try not to overdo it with the kids, but there are a lot of stories I can tell them about the geography I saw, and the people I met. Also, I want to help my students get off the beaten path, help them appreciate the outdoors, impress upon them to have an idea and go for it,” he said.
Gould stands 5-foot-9 and weighs 150 pounds – “same now as I was then,” he said.
“I thought I would lose weight on my run across the country, but I didn’t because I was constantly eating, including power bars and Fig Newtons on the road.”
Maintaining his weight can be explained, in part, by Gould’s compact build as a natural athlete. But a lot of it has to do with the fact he still runs regularly as a member of the Greater Springfield Harriers, a club which competes all over New England.
“With the Harriers, I’m just one of the runners. Believe me, there are some real studs on that team,” he said.
Gould also runs with his high school teams. His present-day athletes will tell you he’s very hard to beat, even though they’re some 30 years younger.
He came back to Amherst Regional in 1995, thanks to a “grapevine” that informed him of the impending retirement of Randy Crowley, the man who had coached him in high school.
“The grapevine actually was my mother,” Gould said. “When she told me about Randy’s plans, I called him. He went to bat for me, and I got the job.”
Amherst has had only two cross country coaches since 1955, thanks to the Crowley-Gould connection.
In Gould’s 18 years of coaching, his boys teams have won the Western Massachusetts championship 11 times. In 2012, his outdoor track team swept the Western Mass. meet, giving Amherst a triple crown – regional titles in cross country, then indoor and outdoor track in the same academic year.
His daughter Audrey, a freshman at Tufts, won the Western Mass. indoor mile as a high school senior. His daughter Lily runs the 600 and 1,000 meters as an Amherst sophomore. His youngest daughter, 8-year-old Bea, attends school in Pelham.
Some of those running genes come from wife Deborah, whom Gould married soon after his “Across America” adventure.
“Actually, Debbie is more suited for that run than I was,” he said. “She has done 50-mile runs, and she’s a 2:53 marathoner.”
When Gould decided to do something about his “infatuation” with the idea of running across America, he wasn’t really that well prepared for it.
“At that point, I wasn’t exactly an elite runner. I had done two marathons, and I had never run more than 80 miles in a week,” he said.
If he needed further inspiration, it came from older brother Jeff, who had been diagnosed with stage 3 testicular cancer in 1987.
“Jeff was three years into his recovery, so doing something for cancer research seemed to be an appropriate cause,” Gould said. “But even without that, I think I would have done the run.”
Twelve years later, Gould also was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Like his brother, he underwent successful treatment. He has been cancer-free for 10 years.
At the time of his decision to do the run, Gould was three years removed from Wesleyan University, where he ran cross country and track, and played baseball.
He left a teaching job at St. Louis Country Day School to join Deborah, who was working in San Francisco, so he could prepare for his cross-country trek.
He could not have made it without help – good friends who would drive a pickup truck to his next destination. One such, a St. Louis friend named Corbin Hoornbeek, accompanied him part of the way and helped in their quest for lodging and meals.
“That first day – March 1, 1991 – felt eerie, kind of scary, when I got to the Golden Gate Bridge for the start of it,” Gould said.
Then off he went, crossing into Sausalito, and eventually into the Sierras. All went well, until he began feeling a searing pain in his knee. Hoornbeek had to drive him to a hospital in Reno, Nev., where a doctor told him what he was attempting was “insane.” But the doctor did help him with treatments and advice on stretching that enabled him to get back on the road after a week lost to injury.
Gould has largely maintained the physique and fitness level that allowed him to complete his journey in 1991.
As it turned out, he somehow managed to stay on the road just about every day after that, although he had to settle for walking at times when the knee – then painful shins – would demand he stop running.
“I averaged 4-4½ hours a day on the road when I was running, and about 5-8 hours a day when I had to walk,” he said.
The only other break in his schedule came when Deborah called to tell him about a teaching job open in Oakland, Calif.
“I flew back, got the job, and hit the road again two days later,” he said.
As injuries and walking impeded his progress, he admits to times when he wondered if he really could do this. All of that changed after he had made it through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.
“Then it was into Kansas – and what a relief to be running in flat country. All it would be was one town after another with a grain elevator, Grange hall and post office. Along the way, I got a lift from a rock radio station. Once they picked up what I was doing, they stayed with me, had me call in every morning for the last 1,000 miles,” he said.
From Kansas, Gould made it into Missouri, where friends from his teaching days picked up his trail and gave him company and encouragement.
“When I reached St. Louis, I knew I could make it. I had 857 miles to go, and I could smell the finish line,” he said.
That finish came on the morning of July 8, when he reached the Capitol. His mother greeted him with a hug and a simple yet touching comment: “You made it!”
Three years later, Gould completed requirements for a master of arts degree in liberal studies from Wesleyan. For his thesis, he submitted a 142-page essay on his cross-country run. He concluded it with lines from Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road”:
“Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose ...”
Garry Brown can be reached Âat geeman1918@yahoo.com