As I completed my final cross country race ever this past Saturday, I was inundated with a slew of emotions and thoughts about where I had been and where I am going. Although I am far from ending my athletics career in college, still having two seasons of track ahead, the end of cross country (my "favorite child" of the three) brought out in me more emotions than I had anticipated. In reality, it all still hasn't sunk in.
You fail to really consider when this day will come in your athletic career. Choosing not to wax sentimental, I have gone about my career with a sort of youthful ignorance that it would be this way forever. And it seemingly has been that... forever. 10 years involved in a sport taken up when I was only 13 years old and in junior high school. At that point, running was something I was good at and chose to do for that reason, in some way goaded by friends and family, but ultimately out of my own choosing. A fast development in the sport was surprising and led ultimately to a specialization, which meant giving up basketball, which at that moment consumed me as much as running does now.
I dove head first into cross country in high school. A long summer of running all too many miles and struggling with what I know recognize was some sort of borderline eating disorder left me unprepared for the long high school cross country season that awaited. An ignorant, young me realized nothing of the nutritional and “recovery” demands that are so necessary in this sport. Even a car needs a regular tune up and refresher. Before that, however, I entered the realm of high school athletics as one of the top freshmen in the state as well as (based on milesplit rankings) the nation. I honestly did not realize the scope of how well I was doing as I placed in the top of many competitive races near and ahead of guys who would later go on to compete at the state meet and fare very well there. Unable to maintain the highest level of intensity for the season, I learned that burnout comes to those who fail to give him the proper respect Thus was the end of the first season in high school.
Improvement-wise, my high school career was far from dramatic, though I did get better each year. Experiencing ups and downs as every runner eventually will, I believe I had the encompassing experience that I could have hoped for. Although brighter horizons were painted based upon my emergence as a freshman among the state and national rankings, I proved unable to really move up drastically or see a development into what one would call a contender. Some people hit their "peak" earlier and it is clear that my earlier athletic development put me out in front of my peers earlier, only to have them gradually catch up. However, hindsight is 20/20, and you don't necessarily make room for the long term development that I now see would have been fitting, given a more conservative approach early on. I threw myself head on into the endeavors of cross country running, as were and still are my obsessive tendencies to do everything in excess. In a way, I knew and loved too much the sport of running early on, and was thus urged by myself alone to go all out. Naïveté is a strange and dangerous beast. The gods of running were generous souls and allowed me to garner someone-out-there's attention, leading to a college scholarship and an opportunity of another four years involved in this perilous, yet miraculous, sport.
Athletics in college were a whole different realm, but something that I was equally ready and excited for. Ready to bring my talents and love for the sport to a level that is one step higher (more than one step, I would argue) to Division I athletics. The experience of travel across the country for meets is a perk of those given the gifts to do so, and I have been lucky enough to attend an institution with the funds and the "go-ahead" to provide me with the opportunity to do so. I have flown multiple times to locations simply to run in a race among other collegians doing the same thing. Ah, the business of NCAA athletics. Are we not so privileged and deserving of this triviality? A mere vacation to trot five miles on some manicured golf course down in the Florida Gulf? College athletics tests the very mettle of one and the ability they have to balance life and school with what is essentially the "full-time job" of running. You either love it fully, or you choose to brush it aside. There is no hiding a lack of enthusiasm.
As expected, I only fell more in love with this discipline over the last four years. At times, it had consumed me (both good and bad), led me to and away from friends, and in and out of times of enthusiasm and depression, for lack of a better term. Out of the cataclysm of emotions and experiences has come a man and an athlete that I can only hope (to outsiders) is better because of the trials. For if not a better person, was the endeavor all for naught? The old cliche of "running emulates life" is overused, although one cannot deny the truth in the statement. Just as the very fibers of the leg muscles are molded into those suited to the demands of running, so is one molded and morphed through life's events. The former, running, is often times more painful. It only makes you more withstanding of everything life will throw at you.
Not only have I learned more about life, but more about myself as well. I have learned what I do wrong (lots), what I do right (little) and what I need to keep an eye on in terms of personal betterment. Relationships with teammates have brought me to conclusions time and time again that, although I would like it to be, running is not the be all end all to life that we sometimes make it out to be. Although a discipline requiring massive amounts of mental and physical energies, it is, in the end, a form of sport. Putting one leg in front of the other, at varying speeds and distances, just to spice things up. And if I have tried to convince myself of one thing throughout the trials of this sport, it is just that. Outside of the small sphere of individuals concerned about my running: families, coaches and the like, no one truly cares how well or how awful I run on the course. To the unassuming bystander or hobby jogger, I am fast. Even when I am slow, I am still fast to them. Times mean nothing to most people, as is reinforced by the “good race” comment after any and all races I have run. It makes you realize that you are out there doing something admirable; however, when all is said and done, you are the only one who will fret about your performance. Be happy with your own running, I tell myself. In a way, it is a self-serving sport in that you do it for yourself. But if that is the most selfish thing I do for myself in this life, then so be it. As long as my attitude over a race doesn’t negatively shine on the world (as it sometimes may), then I am allowed to wallow in my sadness or show bravado in a personal record or a smashing race.
Time shouldn’t go by this quickly, but it does. I refrain from looking back and deciding what “could have been done” in any one season or training block, for that is all in the past. Regret is a dirty monster in the game of running, for you could look back at any single race and say that you could have ran harder, could have just pushed your corpuscles to that extra limit to gain the extra few seconds. But could you have? That is the eternal question that can truly never be answered. Maybe that is what is so intriguing about the sport of running, the allure that keeps bringing us back and back for more. Each day, we try and make ourselves better, and that is the art of running.
