Nothing beats high school cross-country

A couple weeks back, I drove past a local park where a cross-country race was in progress. The sun shone down as maybe sixty girls worked their way up a long incline. That looks like fun, I thought. The scene brought to mind my glorious high school cross-country career, circa 1977. My brother had run cross-country the year before and he encouraged me to join the team. “Days off school,” he said. I’m in!

Let’s be frank; my school sucked at cross-country. Our coach was an excellent man, built like a fire hydrant, but he was no runner. He’d picked up a few terms, though. He would talk about fartlek. “Swedish for speed play,” he’d tell us. “English for fart lick,” we’d reply. It’s a wonder all high school teachers aren’t alcoholics.

We trained twice a week, never otherwise. Each practice started with some stone-cold stretching. Then we’d jog around the track for a bit, doing butt flicks and waving our hands like we’d just been in the bathroom and there were no paper towels in the dispensary. Then we’d run some wind sprints, followed by 200m repeats, or maybe a few 400s, We treated each one like the Olympic final. After each interval we’d gather around Coach, fingers pressed to carotids to measure our heart rates. Cresting 200 bpm was standard. Nowadays I can’t get my heart to move faster than 167. My heart is that old guy in the LeBaron in front of you, driving below the speed limit. Occasionally, we’d do “long” runs. The junior and senior squads headed out onto nearby country roads but we midgets ran about two miles on concrete sidewalks through the neighbourhood. I hated that run, just trudging along, but the payoff was missing school for races.

I remember my first race like it was last week. It was held at a school on the fluid border of encroaching suburbs and disappearing farmland. About 100 runners lined up on the track. Todd Dupuis was at the front of our rank; I was right behind him. Todd was fast. He was also a grown man: handlebar moustache, blonde afro, covered in body hair, a head taller than the rest of us.

A pistol shot. A crazed sprint to a gap in a fence. Wood chips in a raging river. A Lactic Piano falls from heaven. The pace slows like gravity has tripled. Down an embankment, slosh through a creek, shoes now sodden anchors. Clamber out of the ravine, heart thrashing in chest cavity. Todd’s right in front of me. We’re on single track, swooping around a field. I realize I’m feeling OK, that I’m actually enjoying myself. There are maybe 15 guys ahead of us. Go Todd! Was that me? Todd surges wide into thigh-high grass. I lurch after him. We move emphatically past guys and back onto school property. The barn is in sight, and all the horses are flying. Todd keeps passing people as we head onto the track for a lap. He passes another guy, then a couple more while I try to keep up. Rounding the last bend, Todd moves into second. I follow into fourth. Now Todd is on the leader’s shoulder. He towers over him. Maybe I can catch them, I think. I pump my match stick arms and blow by the guy in front of me.

Suddenly, I’m chest-deep in wet concrete. The kid I just passed inches by me. Meanwhile, Todd is now leading. The finishing chute closes fast: 20 metres, 10. Todd looks over his right shoulder, slows, and gets passed on the left. The winner hits the tape a chest ahead of Todd. I finish fourth, stunned by Todd’s gaffe. But coach and a dozen teammates bound over, whooping and hollering. Our next two runners score high enough to earn us the midget team title.

Our school never wins anything. We scheme about how we will attack the next race. Go out harder! Surge mid-race! It doesn’t occur to train harder. To us, it’s all in our heads. If we can enter a race convinced we’ll suck and instead second and fourth, then victory next time is inevitable.

Or maybe not. Next race we’re sitting in fifth and sixth when Todd drops out. We’d gone out too hard. I plug along, but lose a couple spots over the final quarter-mile. We are bummed, but vow to get ‘em next time.

Next time never arrives. Todd is getting brutal headaches when he runs. His doctor says, “Stop running.” I start getting shooting pains in my right knee. I see a very busy orthopaedic surgeon. He rushes into his office with a hypodermic syringe, inserts it into my knee joint, filling it with cortisone. “Stop running. It’s bad for you.”

Twenty years later, office flub beginning to accumulate, I started running again. When my knee inevitably started hurting, a physiotherapist showed me some stretches that have kept me on the road ever since. I don’t regret my missed years of running. I might have quit anyway. That’s how things went in 1977. I’m glad I got to race at all.

I don’t remember the day before that first race, or the day after, but I remember that race. Adult life consists largely of drudgery — feed the cat, wash the kids, fold the socks, punch the clock. We need sticky moments, stuff that memory can cling to. That race was such a moment. I hope for many more.

Don’t stop running.