It started on a Tuesday
afternoon with a jog to Stephen’s State park. My first practice with the high school cross
country team was almost my last when I found out it would be five miles with
lots of hills -- but with promises from an upperclassman named Jen, who swore
that I could run as slow as I wanted, I went ahead and jogged away from the
school. She was the first reason why I initially did not quit. And then, when I arrived back to school a
while later, I was so completely and unexpectedly consumed with a sense of
total disbelief and well being that I had made it, I now had a second reason to
return. I’d like to also imagine I felt an inner sense
at this moment that this experience was going to embolden me in larger and
greater ways of which I was yet unaware.
It was in fact, my seminal run, but the least of which had anything to
do with athleticism.
There was the “game farm”, the “chemical
factory”, “Mt. Rascal Road”, mile
repeats and 600’s. It was the late
summer of 1983, and running was not fashionable in the way it is now. Races with sponsors, prizes, superheroes,
spray paint and the like had not yet come into being. This was back when we didn’t even run with
headphones. Instead we ran with each
other and that is the story.
Our coaches sat in a pickup
truck moving at different places along the routes. With cigarettes dangling from their mouths
and a big ounce coffee at their sides, they would shout out encouraging things
to Patty and I along the way—the two slowest members on the team. I distinctly remember the idling motor behind
us on a vertical hill, and their shouted words out of the windows of the truck-- “pump your arms” and she and I would dig in as
deep as we could. We were not the
typical narrow hipped teenage girls that found running easy. To the contrary--we were red faced and sweaty
at the end of each run, none of them ever feeling easier than the last. Interestingly, our coaches never made us feel
bad about it. In fact, I think they
found our effort rather remarkable, given their own questionable state of fitness
and motivation. We must have been an
anomaly to them.
The runs to the “chemical
plant” will be burned into my mind forever.
Basically, this route was a total of 10 miles along a dusty and long railroad
track. It would probably be illegal now. We knew when we arrived at
practice, that if it was “a long and slow” day, we’d be running on the
tracks. Despite the lack of scenery it
turned out to be one of my favorite runs.
For two hours, there was nothing to do but chat about life and there
wasn’t any topic that we didn’t cover. I
forget the details of those conversations, but not the feeling of closeness and
companionship that evolved on our mini-marathons at the end of the school
day. We needed nothing to be
connected—not a cell phone, not Facebook; not a Garmin or a running app. Looking back—running on a deserted railroad
track was the perfect medicine for an insecure teen with lots of questions
about life. In fact, those runs turned out to be a
reference point for the years that have followed. From the deepest core of my being, I learned
that most times, all it takes is a kindred spirit to get through challenges; and
that inspiration, determination and satisfaction comes from being last
sometimes, again and again.
