When Lyle Smith moved to Longmont two years ago at the urging of his wife, Heather, who had lived in Boulder years ago, his son, Aiden, gave him a blank journal as a Christmas gift. The journal lay unopened until the following summer, when Aiden joined the Niwot high school cross country team.

Each morning that summer, Smith, a 57-year-old marketing consultant, would drop Aiden off at the school for training, then head down Niwot Road over to the Old Oak Coffee House. There, with an hour and half to himself, Smith began writing down stories from his own high school running days in the 1980s at Bernards High School, a New Jersey powerhouse. His coach, from youth running as a sixth grader through many wins at Bernards, was former University of Colorado head coach Mark Wetmore.

Now, those Old Oak Coffee House notes and stories have been published as “Blood, Sweat & Spikes: Running the Wetmore Way,” an engaging and readable memoir of the arc of a running career that is a tribute to Smith’s family, teammates, Wetmore and his other influential coaches and teammates. It gives insights into the mindset of a young man for whom running was a way of expressing himself, capturing well the ebbs and flows, ups and downs of running and racing as Smith navigates the pressures, workouts, races, goals, wins and losses and, most of all, the camaraderie and friendships that form the true significance of a running career.

He will read from “Blood, Sweat & Spikes” July 1 at the Trident Cafe, as well as July 9 at Runners Roost and July 16 at In Motion Running after the stores’ regular Wednesday evening group runs.

“It was a great experience; I could not have asked for anything better,” Smith said of putting together his memoir when we got together last week. “This was the right book for me. Writing it helped me figure out what was important about that time, not just the glory days of high school, but something deeper, a human connection to all these people.”

Smith was a beat reporter for a New Jersey paper for a spell after graduating from Villanova, where his promising track career was cut short by a misdiagnosed injury. The pain of that injury, as much emotional and psychological as physical, stayed with Smith for a long time; the memoir, he says, was a way to “sort through” those emotions.

Central to much of the story, the North Star guiding waves of runners, is Wetmore, who attended Bernards before going on to get an English degree and return to his roots to coach. Later, Wetmore became an assistant at CU under the late Jerry Quiller before taking the helm and leading the Buffs to prominence; he remained at CU until last year.

“Blood, Sweat & Spikes” shows that Wetmore’s coaching philosophy and engagement with his athletes was there from the start. The memoir, however, is not a training manual or guide to workouts. Rather, it is a coming-of-age story told in a friendly, conversational way that reflects the personality of Smith, a gregarious storyteller of the Irish style, the kind of guy you’d want to be on a long Sunday run with.

Smith shows how learning how to “spike up,” to warm up, cool down, finish workouts and to be accountable to yourself and to your teammates is all part of a young runner’s maturation.

Under Wetmore, Smith won 12 individual state titles, including four “Meet of Champions” wins, along with four state relay and two Penn Relays titles. “Mark always talked about how he liked the idea of doing something no one else has done,” Smith said. “He would set goals, sometimes he would not tell us about them. We all had these things we were chasing, all unique. It was one of those things keeping us in the sport.

“Everything was about being part of something bigger than ourselves. Everyone felt they were part of something, part of the tradition.” Smith gives insights into what it was like for a bright-eyed youngster to compete at the Millrose Games. “I saw Olympians and world record holders up close. Celebrities were out for the night like the Hollywood stars who fill the floor seats at Lakers games. Miler-Gods … it was like seeing Mount Rushmore standing up and jogging around the same place you were allowed to be.”

Smith leads most of his race, before getting past by John Trautman and others in the final two laps, feeling “disappointment, demoralized, walking around in a fog.” Then, he writes, “Mark pulled me aside” saying “he was proud of the way I ran. It was courageous, he said.”

Smith continues, “I’ve had that experience with Mark a few times. When he seemed to know things no one else did. Things no else could possibly understand. So often the insight was uncanny. And always at the right time.”

“Blood, Sweat & Spikes” is both personal and universal; it showcases a slice of youth and prep running in a top program, and the commonalities all runners share, the regular training routes that get their own names, the closeness and competitiveness that can build in training.

Most of all, the memoir shows the special bond that lucky kids have when an adult is a role model. What is important, the book shows, is not fast times or wins, but rather the message Wetmore gives Smith after he anchored a 4×800 meter relay: that “he was proud of the way I’d conducted myself.”

Adds Smith in his acknowledgments: “And to Charles Mark Wetmore for helping us accomplish the things that were never done before and creating something meaningful to carry along with us forever.”

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