When Staying the Course is Ill-Advised

About once a year, when the brisk air first sinks to eye level, and the Canadian geese flee the impending cold, I get the urgent desire to run. Donning my running gear, which I keep for this one occasion, I usually jog half a mile before I begin to feel the burden of my body in my knees, so I then run in two minute intervals, walking five minutes in between them. This way, I can satisfy my annual running quota without needing to spend several weeks in recovery.

I wasn’t always encumbered by aging joints, but for me, running has always been accompanied by a waning willpower. In fact, before I was even appreciative of productive knees, donning my running gear required that I mentally overcome a daunting obstacle: the memory of my publicized and circulated running failure. Here is the story:

In my early teenage years, my older sister, who is now a distinguished long-distance runner, convinced me to join our school’s running club. She told me that it was casual, that I could run and walk in regular intervals, or that I could skip any day I wanted. Realistically, she provided my ride home from school, so I had little choice. I joined the club, and we immediately began training for a 5K race at the end of the school year.

With only a half-mile track and a mile-long trail behind our school, the training was repetitive. Each lap on the track made me resent the idea of racing, and each loop in the trail made me resent the idea of running. Nevertheless, I had already paid the race registration fee, and I wouldn’t get a t-shirt if I didn’t participate in the race, so I had to carry on with my commitment.

The race itself took place at a nearby university in late May. Thousands of people participate in this race every year, and the year I participated was no exception. My sister and I arrived two hours early to ensure that we would receive our commemorative t-shirt and time-keeping shoe tag. A few hours later, surrounded by race participants, we shuffled towards the starting line. I remember the start being staggered by anticipated pace, with the fastest runners poised and ready at the front. I moseyed towards the back of the running section, figuring that I could drop towards the walkers at any point.

When the race began, I started slow, as I still do. I passed some people; others passed me. The running landscape was more varied than the track and trail had been, but the novelty dwindled as I confronted the length of the race. In my casual training, I had never run five kilometers, nor had I sufficiently prepared myself to do so. One would think that my youth alone would be enough to propel me to the finish line, but I was discouraged. Slowing down, I positioned myself among some fast walkers, as well as those who ran and walked intermittently. Then, finding my friend among this group, I made my way toward her to chat. Similarly miserable, she was happy to see me.

With someone to distract me from all matters related to the race, I slowed to a crawl, and she did too. I remember dozens of people passing us with strollers and other weighty hindrances, but I didn’t particularly care. With her by my side, I didn’t even remember the passage of copious time.

As we rounded the final corner of the race, we heard a rumbling noise behind us. Turning that way, we saw a series of golf carts removing the cones and poles that had demarcated the route. The route had become indistinguishable; they had cleaned up almost all three miles. For that matter, not a single person was walking behind us. My friend turned towards me with panic in her eyes, then began to sprint towards the finish line. I did too, but I could not catch her, leaving me to be the absolute last place finisher of the annual race. I kept running towards the parking lot, eager to leave the horror of last place behind me, but not without noticing a news camera angled towards my friend and me. When I looked back after running for a few moments, the camera lens was still following us. Though I desperately hoped the footage would never be shown, a few days later, the recap of the race was broadcast over the 6 o’clock news hour, and I was pictured dashing across the finish line nearly two and a half hours after the race had commenced.

Over the following days, I heard a lot about the outcome of the race. No one was there to see us finish, but it seemed everyone had seen the “Young Duo” that almost got “Cleaned off the Course!” I personally didn’t watch the news story, nor did my friend and I care to talk about it. I told some classmates that I had intended to finish last after being dared to, though I’m not sure how many believed me. On top of this, my mom fielded extra phone calls for a few days; everyone we knew expressed to us that they had seen me on the news and that they couldn’t believe I had finished utterly last. Indeed, the embarrassment was great, so great that I still remember it twenty years later. Being an extremely introspective person, I sometimes dwell on this day, thinking about how the outcome might have changed had I not been so bitter about running. But what was a great embarrassment then is now a source of great amusement for my sister and me. With a knowing smile on her face, she maintains that with proper training, I could still be a great runner, that I might even outpace her. I would love to beat her someday, but for now, I am perfectly content with running just once a year.