LAKEWOOD — Her gold was in the bag.
They all were, technically. The night before she rewrote Colorado’s record book, Addison Ritzenhein, the Niwot senior who’s run like almost no teen distance runner ever has, went into her closet and pulled out a dozen state medals. As she laid them out side-by-side, all the miles started talking back.
Addy and her dad had found themselves waxing about the moments and the memories during a Friday night drive. It was the eve of her final CHSAA state track meet. The last ride.
“I want you to bring them (Saturday) morning,” Dathan Ritzenhein, head coach at On Athletics Club in Boulder, told his daughter when he saw the medals. He suggested putting all of them in a big bag and bringing it to Jeffco Stadium on Saturday.
“And then we’ll take them out at the end (of the meet). And we’re going to line them all up. I want to take a picture of you with all of them.”
Dad had a hunch.
Company was coming.
At a record pace, too.
“I wanted to have a perfect ending to my entire high school career,” Addy said after setting a state mark in the 4A girls 1600 meters in her final CHSAA event. “And I just had to remind myself that I’d done everything I could up to this moment.”
Move over, Wendy Koenig. Make some room, Melody Fairchild. The Kaltenbachs? Scooch over. Emma Coburn, Katie Rainsberger and Elise Cranny? You, too. If Ritzenhein isn’t the greatest girls prep distance runner in Colorado history, her closing kick made one heck of a case.
The resume? Ten track titles in four years. Seven as an individual. Two this weekend. Three more golds in cross-country. Mom and dad were two of the best to ever run at CU, and she’s darn near already lapped where they were at her age.
Her last race set another state-meet bar — 4:44.47 in the 1600. A final push in the last 100 meters shot her past Air Academy’s Jordan Banta (4:50.28) and bested Rainsberger’s old 4A state mark of 4:45.27, set in 2016.
“I’m lost for words,” Addy said.
Unrivaled?
Unsurpassed?
Unmatched?
“Feels like a huge wall of relief, honestly,” Ritzenhein told me as the gold around her neck sparkled in Lakewood’s mid-morning sun. “It’s just so many (emotions). A wall of emotions.”
She ran through them, anyway, just as she ran through everything else during her senior season. Addy might’ve been born on first base with mom and dad’s genetics, but she slid into third base on her own hustle, will and want-to. Ritzenhein’s favorite quote is also her mantra: Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.
Which sums up why she’d run at the NXN Nike Cross Nationals this past December with a 104-degree fever and flu-like symptoms. Yet when the Cougars needed her to post up in order to finish second in the nation, Addy saddled up and dragged herself to the end.
“She felt like the team would have won (if she didn’t have) the flu, and she ran with a fever,” Dathan recalled. “She didn’t dwell on it … ‘I have to look forward and I can’t sit here in this moment … you gotta move on.'”
She moves. She proves. She grooves. In a family of elite runners, Addy might be the most competitive in the bunch. And the most cutthroat. Little brother Jude cracked that there’s a video the family took of him, at age 5, being moved to tears when a then-8-year-old Addison kicked his tail in “Monopoly.”
She also knows when to make the grind fun. When to take a title team’s blood pressure down a few notches.
“They’d come in from where it was muddy running, and she’ll wipe the mud off her shoe and she’ll take it and put it underneath the stall of the person next to her,” Dad recalled. “Just funny little harmless things like that.”
Before she ran with a fast crowd, her dad ran with the fastest in the world. Dathan is a three-time Olympian and the American record-holder in the 5K from 2009-10. was a cross-country All-American at CU. When Addy wasn’t watching dad at London’s 2012 Summer Games, she was
Now she wants to chase those big dogs down.
“I like to dream big, and being an Olympian would be my big goal,” said Addy, who’s headed to Northern Arizona University. Then she shrugged. “And if I fall short, it’s OK. But yeah, that’s my big goal.”
“You have to dream about that if you want to accomplish it and you have to see yourself do it a 1000 times before you actually do it,” Dathan said. “And so for her to know that she’s coming away from here with probably the best career in high school that I could think of … she’s just been consistent, and that makes me feel like she’s in a really good spot of development.”
Addy’s medals normally reside in her closet. Although, because of all the awards, including three Gatorade Colorado Girls Cross Country Player of the Year trophies, it’s not so much of a walk-in type as it is a crawl-in.
“It’s almost impossible to walk in there,” Jude laughed. “There’s a shelf in there just full of clothes, packed with clothes, and there’s a shelf behind it full of trophies.”
Best make room for one more. Somehow.
“I knew (Saturday’s) game plan, and I thought that she was going to take it right away a little bit faster,” Dathan said of Addy’s final lap. “I then kind of realized (there) was about 200 to go. I was like, ‘Oh, she might run the record.’ And I was like, ‘This is gonna be a sweet way to end.’ And she seemed fully focused, still, with 100 to go. I don’t know at what point she realized it and got to really enjoy it. But I hope she did.”
A collapse into the grass after a run for the ages eventually gave way to a grin for the ages.
“Everyone wants a perfect ending,” Addy said. “But I think I accomplished it.”
With that, Ritzenhein turned west on a white heel, rounded third and headed for home, riding a smile 5,551 feet high and a shadow twice as long.
