Running with the Buffaloes

Chris Lear’s Running with the Buffaloes is a nonfiction chronicle of the 1998 University of Colorado men’s cross-country season, widely regarded as one of the most candid inside accounts of elite distance running ever written. Lear, a former Princeton runner, embedded with the Buffaloes after receiving permission from head coach Mark Wetmore, attending practices, races, meetings, and team gatherings from preseason through the NCAA Championships. The book centers on the 1998 CU squad, a group coping with the death of standout runner Adam Goucher’s teammate and friend, and on Goucher himself, then the reigning NCAA cross-country champion chasing a repeat title. The narrative follows the team’s training under Wetmore and assistant coach Heather Burroughs, whose notoriously high-altitude, high-mileage methods in Boulder, Colorado, are documented in detail: long threshold runs, hill circuits, doubles, and the “Buffalo” workouts that gave the team its identity. Lear captures the physical punishment and the psychological toll of a season built around peaking for November. Runners such as Goucher, Clint Wells, Steve Slattery, and others are shown navigating injuries, illness, academic pressure, and internal rivalries while chasing team and individual NCAA qualification. The book’s distinctive contribution is its granular, unglamorous realism: it reports split times, workout logs, dorm-room conversations, and coaching decisions rather than offering motivational aphorisms. Lear also examines the tension between individual ambition and team scoring in cross-country, and the way Wetmore manages both. The season builds toward the 1998 NCAA Cross Country Championships in Lawrence, Kansas, where the Buffaloes’ preparation and Goucher’s title defense are tested against rival programs. The result is a specific, warts-and-all portrait of a Division I distance program at its competitive peak.