Run Forrest Run!
I hate running. But I love having run. In the small southern town where I grew up, in high school everybody did everything. We had to. There weren’t enough people to go around. So football players marched in their shoulder pads with the band at halftime, and basketball players ran track in the spring after the state tournament was over (whether they wanted to or not.) My senior year, we got a new basketball coach who instituted cross country, so I learned to do that, too. That’s just the way it worked in a one stoplight town. To get to what you wanted to do, you had to do some stuff that you didn’t. That’s one of those lessons that doesn’t get you much mileage on the ACT but has a pretty good payoff in life.
In high school track, each member of the team could be involved in up to four events at meets. I ran the lead-off leg on three sprint relays, and my individual event was the open quarter mile. I loved the relays (even if I wasn’t particularly fond of the running.) I loved the significance of the hand-off—how much it mattered, how much it had to be practiced, how much trust and concentration was involved. I also loved that our anchor leg was so good, if we got her the baton anywhere close to the others she was racing against, we’d usually win the race. I’d fly out of the starting blocks, run my leg, hand off the baton, then high-tail it—regardless the distance of the leg—back across the middle of the track to the finish line, the spot from which I had just taken off, to greet our last leg as she crossed the tape. I loved being connected like that. Our relay teams were tight little four person families who ran separately together toward a time and toward a prize.
But I’d like to punch the open quarter in the face. The quarter mile is a gut check race. You run it by yourself, without the luxury of an anchor to catch-up when you fall behind. It’s one lap around the track, basically in a full sprint—or as much of one as you can muster—and it never ever gets easier no matter how much you train. It hurt to run it every single time. I hated toeing up at the starting line in my lane assignment; I hated the dreadful first curve; I hated the lonely backside straight-away; I hated the final curve where I started to lose feeling in my legs; I hated the way my glutes cramped the moment that I stopped. I didn’t love anything about it. Ever.
Except that once my body recovered, I was pretty sure there wasn’t much I couldn’t do.
That’s the thing about hard things.
Thirteen years ago, on the day of my mom’s biopsy, we ran our own sort of open quarter. The space between the test and the verdict was a slog. We knew it was cancer, we just didn’t know how bad, so we spent the day dancing with demons. It was the classic “I-don’t-know-if-I-can-do-this-but-I’m-not-sure-I-have-a-choice” that I felt every time I lined up on the track for my individual quarter mile, waiting for the starter to raise and fire his gun. The significance of one juxtaposed against the insignificance of the other is not lost on me, however, the sinew required to get through both is, eerily, basically the same.
Mom’s ultimate diagnosis, treatment, and recovery had plenty of uphill stretches. We ran long distances together—her, obviously, far more than me--but the hardest part, for me, was the day of waiting. We walked and talked and hung out on the patio in my backyard, staring at the phone, willing it to ring. I remember the dread, the lonely, the numb…and the cramping of relief that came in a rush at the end. But once the day was over, we were emboldened. Whatever would be required of us next was something we knew we could do.
Hard things are funny like that. They take all your money, punch you in the gut, leave you for ruin, and then hand you a voucher with no expiration date and call you a cab. The tussle changes the landscape. I think that’s why I still like having run.
I ran the open quarter for my track team because my track coach, who was also my basketball coach, told me to. Track was the plus one that came along with basketball, so I did what I needed to do. As it turned out, the quarter mile was a great race for me (read: a little speed and a lot of stubborn). My running it at meets helped our team pile up points where our little band of runners won and won and won. We were even crowned State Champs in 1982. They gave us medals and trophies and a blue and gold letter-jacket with a state of Oklahoma patch on the front. And though I never had fun doing it, I’ve always been glad that I did.
They gave us medals and trophies and a blue and gold letter-jacket with a state of Oklahoma patch on the front. And though I never had fun doing it, I’ve always been glad that I did.
The stuff they gave us for winning is in a plastic tub somewhere, I’m sure. But those weren’t the spoils I took with me from my days spent circling a red cinder track. For starters, running taught me about discipline. My friend who’s a former professional runner says it’s the one sport that you can’t hide in—if you don’t do the work, the world will know. She’s right. You do it naked and alone, and your preparation doesn’t lie. Running also taught me about focus—the things you have to keep in the forefront of your vision, the places you cannot allow your mind to go. But mostly, I think, running taught me that sometimes you have to do stuff that you don’t particularly enjoy. And that doing your best, regardless, is a prize all its own.
I run almost every day, still, and I never want to do it as I walk out my back door. But every single time I finish, I get a whiff of “can-do” in the air. Hard things are everywhere. We choose some and some choose us. Either way, the opportunities to be and to be better pile up around our feet. And though it never feels like it at the time, gifts are always waiting on the backside of hard things.
P.S.
