The Return of Optimism

I have to apologize for pulling a disappearing act for the past few weeks. I wasn’t trying to dodge the blog (and my loyal 8-10 readers), but this is one of those things that just has to happen naturally. The writing and stories aren’t exactly that of a skilled technical writer (which is painfully obvious when I go back and read some past entries), but a fun way to capture a rather interesting experience. As you can probably tell by the title, things at In Over My Head Headquarters have not been great recently. As a matter of fact, we had all began to accept the sad fact that it was over. Mo would have to be retired. I had already begun to outline in my head how to write the final chapter to this whole story. That was until Sunday night.

You may remember a couple of entries ago, we had gotten to the point where a final schedule to racing had been set. Any material deviation from that schedule would more or less mean the end of Mo’s racing career. On August 10th, Tyler took him down to Balmoral for a training mile. He was to go in about 2:05 and set himself up for a qualifying mile shortly thereafter. In short, it didn’t go well. We gave him some time and waited for Tony to come up to take a look at him. We were all being hit very hard with reality: Mo wanted to be his old self again…it was obvious to Tyler or anyone else who sat behind him, but his body was getting in the way. We could have quit then, but decided to give him another week to 10 days off, swim him and bring him in for one more training mile. John came in town jogged him. He agreed that one more chance to a fast training mile wasn’t going to hurt anything. The plan was to do it at Maywood Park, the site of his greatest achievement, on Thursday September 1st. We would go down and watch him train in what very well would be his last mile.

For a number of reasons, it turned out the Thursday did not work for us. That timed with the fact that Dr. Tony thought it would be best to go on a mile track (something John always wanted to do anyway) ended up moving his training mile to this past Sunday at Balmoral. I was up in Fox Lake with Laura and her family that night and did everything I could not to think about. We were out with some friends the night before and one asked how Mo was doing. My answer was that tomorrow is make or break. If he can’t finish the mile, we have to retire him. It was a very sad thing to say, but we had all come to grips with it. Greg had told me a few days before he was having a good feeling. I gave up trying. When he struggled on the 10th, it was a crushing blow that is kind of extinguished all the optimism I had left.

When Tyler and I finally connected at about 10:30, the news was not at all what I expected. Mo was solid on his first trip. Buzzed a last quarter in 29 seconds. No issues. Marcus Miller took him the second trip. To the half in 1:01 to the three quarters in 1:31 and came his last quarter in 27 seconds. He said it so calmly.

“Wait a second…what did he go in?”
“Went in 1:58”
“And a last quarter in what?”
“27 seconds”

He then went onto tell me that Mo was definitely sore afterward and despite the good mile, we would just have to wait and see how he comes out of it. At least I think that what he said because I couldn’t really pay attention. All I could do was envision Mo charging down that home stretch and ripping off a 27 second last quarter all by himself. The old boy still has it, I thought. Despite the fact it could still be his last mile, I had a smile from ear to ear. If that was it, he went out with at least a little bit of a bang. It was amazing how good that made me feel that our beloved race horse who loves nothing more in life but to race was able to go out and fly to the wire one last time.

With some surprisingly good news in hand to mix in with bad news, I was kind of a jerk and strung Danny along when giving him the update. “Well…some good and some bad….” I said before giving him the run down. “Wait a second…what did he go in?” That seemed to be the repeating line of the night. To be clear, Mo hadn’t really accomplished anything that anyone outside of our little group would care about. So he trained a good mile. So what? Well, after a year and a half of setbacks it was just an awesome feeling that he busted through a hurdle. At that point, it was just going to be a waiting game to see how he came out of it. My prediction was he’d be sore, have filling in his leg until later in the week and we’d have to make a decision as to what to do next (if anything). Well, I was wrong again.

Today, Dr. Tony was back up at Marengo and Mo was feeling good enough to go out and jog…and he jogged 4 miles showing no signs at all of any soreness whatsoever. Tyler said it was the best he’s been since he got him months ago. Greg told me that just about an hour ago and I nearly fell out of my chair.

The thought going into last weekend was that if Mo had one more miracle in him, now was the time. He was literally down to his last chance. To be clear, Mo isn’t out of the woods yet. I mean, he hasn’t even got to a qualifier, much less an actual race, but this is an exciting turn of events. As I mentioned earlier, I had not only began to think about the final entry to this blog, but I had accepted it. On Monday morning, while out for a run, I got to thinking how nice it would be to end by emphasizing that final training mile. I would try and paint the picture of Mo in full stride with the wind blowing back his mane as he battled through some pain to hit the wire in front of his invisible competitors. As I got to Chief Kuno Trail and started to turn for home about a half mile out, my Ipod flipped to a new song. There were 430 songs in that list on random and when his unofficial theme song came on (Over My Head from The Frey), I stopped thinking. I took that mental story outline, crumpled it up and threw it into my mental garbage can. This thing isn’t over quite yet. We’re already on borrowed time and maybe only have one more week before something bad happens again, but so what. We finally got some good news and it was a heck of a lot of fun. If somehow, someway, Mo can make it back to the winner’s circle just one more time after everything we’ve been through…well, words can’t describe just how special that would be. Danny and I decided we’d carry him back to the barn like a football team carries their coach off the field. Might almost be time to get your cameras ready.