Long and Slow

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.