Running Man

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RUNNING MAN

I had an ignominious beginning to my running career. In junior high the coaches would let students who wanted to do track at the high school go to the track there and practice - without supervision.

This means that being unsupervised junior high students, we would go to the track and jump on the high jump pit for a while and then go back. I didn't do any training, but since I had been excused to practice, I was signed up to do the one-mile run.

I had never run a mile in my life. When the race started, we all ran fast, which is a mistake if you have never ran a mile before. I faded in the first lap, and the only person slower than me had the sense to drop out of the race.

This made it look like I was dead last, which wasn't true. I was second to last, and even though the spectators didn't know it, I knew I wasn't last. Someone from the crowd shouted out, "Hey, the race is over."

It truly was. I then experienced the floating sensation of hyperventilation and decided my body wasn’t meant to run races. I never ran again until I was twenty-five years old.

After we had been to California teaching for a couple of years we returned to Provo, Utah. Some of the people we knew from Camarillo came up to Education Week. They signed up for a Fitness for Life class and were talked into running a race that Saturday. These friends called me up and invited me along.

I was petrified. I seriously had never run in the last ten years, and after the mile debacle, I was convinced I couldn't run a mile.

The race for Saturday was just over 3 miles, a 5K race. I determined to try to run 3 miles before the race so I wouldn't humiliate myself in front of my friends.

I measured a course with my car, and the next day ran the three miles without incident. I decided I would be able to run the race, and that Saturday showed up down at Utah Lake.

It was called the Human Race, and I think Tia has the shirt I got that day. Running races is really a fun communal kind of sport where you get to pay money to torture yourself in front of strangers. And some of these strangers are very serious about their running.

It was an out and back course, which means you get to see everyone who is beating you on their way back from the halfway point.

I was feeling good, and when I got to the end of the race I found I even had a little energy left to kick it up a notch at the end and beat the little old lady and ten-year-old boy in front of me.

This is a feeling most people get in the final stretch. No matter who is running next to me, it turns into a little competition, and sometimes I speed up, and other times I keep the same pace and let the little old lady win.

There really is no description for the feeling you have after running a race, even if it's only a mile or two. You feel alive and have a great bond with the strangers you were trying to vanquish only moments before. You have all been through an experience together; the same course, weather and challenge, and you have all survived.

By the summer of my first marathon, I had probably run 20 or 30 short races and a couple of longer ones. I was never very fast, but I did win a couple of ribbons for being the third of the three guys in my age division. It's a really fun way to spend a Saturday morning.

Even more humiliating was the last long race I ran before my first marathon. We were running out in Eureka along a course which was supposed to be about 5 miles, but was probably more like 8 miles. When we started out, there were only about 50 of us, and since we were going to be running in the hills and mountains of a former mining town, I decided to find someone I could follow so I wouldn't get lost.

There was an old guy with completely grey hair standing nearby in running shorts. I decided I would follow him, since I was easily half his age. It turned out to be a bad choice.

He left me in his dust the first mile, and at the end revealed to all that he was 70 years young. It makes me think this running business is not such a bad idea.

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