Unfinished Lines
It was the last Tuesday of a Midwestern August, at the sun’s afternoon peak, its rays blazing with heat. Hot enough that it felt like someone cranked my body temperature to boiling, then sealed my skin with Saran Wrap. Humid enough to believe I was trapped inside of a sauna for too long, as if I was breathing in only twenty seven percent of the amount of oxygen I was intending to with each labored breath. Yet the ninety-degree temperatures was not enough to call off the McHenry County Cross-Country Meet during my sophomore year of high school.
It wasn’t until after I trudged, red-faced and wheezing, on our home turf at the city park, (apparently the third toughest course in the state of Illinois) that officials finally called off the meet. It wasn’t until after I had walked the backstretches in the woods because I had cottonmouth so bad that they decided the heat was too dangerous to compete in. It wasn’t until after I crossed the finish line from running 3.1 miles and wasn’t sweating anymore that the whistles blew. That, and the fact that I looked around to see parents and coaches scrambling to pick up their daughters and runners who had fallen to the ground, bodies weak with exhaustion. Fainting was not unheard of after a cross-country race (puking was much more common) but not at this rate.
All of the area ambulances had been called to the County Meet that day. I stood under a makeshift PVC pipe shower behind the finish line and wondered if I hated running.
* * * *
The only time I ever won a race was senior year during track season. It was the 1600-meter run, The Mile, the only race I was eager to run multiple laps around a large, paved circle for. I only ran distance races in track, but the 800-meter was too short and fast paced, while the 3200-meter was too long. There was something about the 1600 that felt right and natural and inherently me .
Since the beginning of my freshman year on the team, I wrote down on the notecard handed out that was to be inscribed with our goals for the season that I wanted to run the 1600 in 5:59, just to say that I ran it in under six minutes. The day I won my race senior year, I ran it in 6:07. I was disappointed that I was that close to my goal and hadn’t been able to somehow scrounge up a mere eight seconds to get there.
But I tried not to look too upset; my prom date had showed up at that track meet to watch me run. I may have pretended to be casual about my win; that it happened all the time. Really, I felt like I’d cheated, like I didn’t deserve to win when the only time I ever did was the day my prom date just so happened to be there.
* * * *
We after-school roadrunners encountered many strange items and occurrences in our suburban town during after school workouts. We’d dodge trash and sticks, someone would nearly get hit by a car at least once that day, and we’d hear “Are you eighteen yet?” shouted to any of the girls from passing traffic.
When we were out on the roads during track season in the spring, it usually meant we were running a pack run, rather than doing sprints or speed work. I was in the middle of an eight person pack on a typical ugly day in our suburban town when the girl in front of me suddenly jumped to the right, swinging away from a dark pile lying in the street. Stutter stepping, I looked down and saw that it was the mangled form of a dead cat. My body tensed and somehow managed to hop over it, a small scream erupting from my mouth.
Sadly, my story of nearly stepping on a flattened feline would be upstaged that season by the track team’s class clown who accidentally kicked up a piece of a broken beer bottle halfway out on a long road run, cutting his leg. His story was of legendary material, having had to run several miles back to the school wincing in pain as blood trickled down the gash on his right shin.
Both the dead cat and I had gotten our tongues taken, so to speak.
* * * *
Not until my senior year of cross-country did I run on a varsity level, where no one cut corners but instead would cut you off. Only seven slots were available on the varsity team since it was designated for the fastest members of the cross-country team as a whole, two of which were held by sisters who were the first and third fastest runners in the Class 3A Illinois State girl’s division. Every other season besides my last I ran JV, mostly because I was comfortable there, taking pleasure that if I couldn’t be faster than the sisters, Kayla and Elise Beattie, I was at least fast enough to beat two-thirds of the girls in a junior varsity race. I liked the JV team; we could stop at a fellow JV teammate’s house while we were supposed to be on a road run to eat cookies or take shortcuts to get back to the city park earlier, where the entire co-ed team would meet at the beginning and end of practice. We were immature, boring to watch in races, and laughed a hell of a lot more than the varsity team did. That was the only thing we could outrun them on: laughter.
Although I was basically forced to run varsity senior year due to a lack of participants and previous seniors graduating, I did end up dropping my times by minutes, and graciously accepted the girl’s MIP (most improved player) award at the end-of-season banquet. Landing a spot on the varsity team meant that I was running with Kayla and Elise and the rest of the girls I’d never dreamed I’d race against and it meant that I had a lot of catching up to do. By the end of the season it prevailed, and while I hadn’t quite caught up to the Beattie sisters, I shaved a good two minutes or so off of my JV times from the previous years (which in the running realm is more impressive than going an entire season without getting blisters on your feet). Sometimes I wish I would have kicked myself harder (or been kicked by someone else, specifically someone else wearing a pair of running spikes) and earlier back then so that I would have realized the potential my thin, young, athletic body had. Cookies and lemonade and fun were more important, I suppose.
My MIP plaque sat on the shelf in my room for a few years, reminding me of my failed potential more than any improvements had as it sat gathering dust.
* * * *
Four years ago, I sat in an Anatomy and Physiology classroom lab at McHenry County College, dissecting cats and memorizing every bone in the human body. It was in that classroom one day that my instructor, Marla, shocked me more than her insane pleasure of cutting open dead cats to show us the Latissimus dorsi did. That day, Marla paced exuberantly up and down the side of the classroom as always, the arms attached to her 5’ 11” stringy frame flailing excitedly to be teaching us about joints and muscle tissues. She then told us that by far the worst type of exercise a human can do to injure their joints is to run.
I was aware that running destroys the cartilage in knees and is the cause of shin splints, muscle fatigue, and fractured bones. While I knew deep down that it was true, I wondered if Marla had ever run, ever enjoyed it as I have. Had she ever felt her lungs heaving and sucking in oxygen, as they strained and screamed beneath her chest? Had she ever felt her heart throbbing and aching, actually felt the blood being pumped in and out of the ventricles in the rapid, pulsating process she could verbally explain? Had Marla ever felt her feet hit the earth, her racing spikes grasping frantically at the grass and mud and stones below?
I don’t think she ever did. That’s probably why she was able to flail her limbs around, dancing around the lab, watching us dissect on a cat the very ligaments that she had explained I was most likely destroying.
* * * *
Dissecting my relationship with running is more difficult than any lab practical I’ve ever taken. I’ve been tying my shoelaces, twisting hair into ponytails, accidentally rolling ankles, crossing finish lines, and gotten one too many blisters over what’s been more than half of my life. As a Westwood Elementary School Wildcat, I had a bizarre fixation with running the mile in gym class while everyone else audibly groaned or slowed down to stop and look at Michael Pappas’ shoe that had fallen off on the far edge of the field that he neglected to stop and put back on. Instead, he finished the run with only one shoe on one foot and one filthy mustard yellow sock on the other. Over summer break in the middle of June, my mom, sister, brother, and I would participate in The Mayor’s Challenge, a two mile race in our hometown in which the mayor would also run, challenging the community to race against him, while raising money for the city. The only family member fast enough to beat the surprisingly swift sixty or so mayor with his white hair and knobby knees was my mother, winning a gift certificate for a local restaurant for beating his “challenge”. My siblings and I ran faster to the post race food table for the free Burger King breakfast sandwiches than we did to cross the finish line.
Middle school is where the running for pleasure gets tricky, the forceps have to peel back the anxiety to view the affection. Running the mile in gym class was much harder as an Olson Cardinal than as a Westwood Wildcat had been; everyone now made sure their shoes were tied super tight and that they sprinted the first lap around the field to make it look like they knew what they were doing. Track practice meant an hour of after-school unofficial races amongst teammates. I avoided the competition by spending most of practice at the long jump pit, pretending that I was really trying to improve how well I could leap into an elongated sandbox. Really I was just avoiding running, avoiding the feeling that I wasn’t good enough when I realized I wasn’t the fastest girl running circles around the grassy field.
* * * *
Last summer was the first in about three years that I logged over 100 miles during its course. It took me three years after I graduated high school to realize that I didn’t (and don’t) need a team to run with me and that my excuses for not running were actually hilarious. I had plenty of time to sit on the couch the summer after graduation, watching movies and demolishing three-fourths of a box of Velveeta Shells & Cheese by myself, washed down with a can of Coke, but I didn’t have time for running.
Not that I still don’t make excuses today. I’d love to be one of those insanely impermeable marathon runners who run in the pouring rain without a hat or in the freezing cold with only two thin layers of clothing and a face mask. But I’m not. Running with wet socks and having my clothes suctioned to my body because of the rain is generally something I’d like to avoid. As are frostbitten appendages and death by snowplow. I may think that I’m dying while I’m running, but I know I’m not physically dying. On the contrary, I think I run from death more than I chase satisfaction and numbers on the clock. Better to be safe than sorry.
* * * *
I’ve come a long way since elementary, middle and high school as a runner. Many recent runs I’ve taken have been lab practicals, thinking on mile two between thoughts like, wait, why is my pinky toe numb? Is this a hill or Mount Kilimanjaro? Oh look! A dog!, about what it is that makes me continue to go out and pound pavement. The loop I take around the city park, the same park that I ran all of the home meets of my high school cross-country career in, stays constant, my pace, pain, and ponderings different every time.
My shoelaces will always end up being tied, my hands wrapping a hair tie at the back of my head indefinitely. Each step makes my lungs feel like they’re either going to collapse with fatigue or inflate with ecstasy. Ditching my iPod then later, my watch has flattened any distractions or pressure. Instead I concentrate on the way my satorious feels or if either of my patella ache. I study myself, my curiosity never dwindling after every grueling mile as my body tells me to ease up, to be gentle on my precious ligaments and joints.
I respond to my body now, adjusting my pace, reacting to pain, and acknowledging any lingering anxieties while I pray that my continuing curiosity doesn’t mean I’ll stumble over any more dead cats.