The last few days have been so pristine and beautiful here in Illinois it almost takes your breath away. The skies have been clear. Hardly any breeze. That led me to take a run in the forest preserve where the local teams run cross country. The preserve is named Leroy Oakes after an early conservationist in our county. Like most forest preserves, the property was once a farm. There is even an old one-room schoolhouse next to a restored prairie. The entire scene can take you back in time.
That wasn’t my cause in going to Leroy. But it happens nonetheless. Our St. Charles cross country team was the first to conduct a meet on that property. The preserve was much smaller then. The county has added tracks. The big red barn at the center has not changed, however, and large invitationals often center around that parking lot where teams queue up and generation after generation of scrawny high school kids compete in the sport.
The new course is a true cross country course just as all the other iterations have been since my teammate Kevin Webster first designed a three-mile track. Now the start is held on a wide field that can accommodate 20 or more teams at the start. The beginning of the race crosses a half-mile field to converge on a fire trail. Then it crosses the former entrance to the preserve, climbs a steep hill and goes flying down the back. Then the fun begins, as the course swings east through a mature oak forest and emerges on the grass where a series of undulations show that the streambed once created oxbows out of the same ground. Ferson Creek is still tearing away at the banks to change its course, as streams always do.
That symbolizes the cross country course itself, which has functioned like an oxbow over these many years. I return to watch kids run every year, and have seen some great runners fly over those paths. Former Jacobs high school star and Olympic Silver Medalist in the steeplechase Evan Jagr won a few times and everyone knew that they were witnessing a special athlete indeed.
I was ambling along at 9:20 pace for the most part, taking in the shower of goldenrod and bluestem, sometimes finding it hitting me in the face. They’ve not mowed the former fire trail that climbs the long hill. That’s where we used to do a ton of hill training. Even after college in my racing days, that quarter mile stretch up the east hill was a dependable way to build strength in hill training.
I wound around the course and found myself climbing a section that appeared to be a passage into the sun itself. Light streamed down the short hill and everything around me was illuminated. It was a joyous patch of running.
As the sun began to set the light crossing the grounds turned golden. My final half mile was run along that opening stretch of the cross-country course. I hope to get out there and see the start of a race because it’s always thrilling. Still thrilling. Knowing the excitement of those opening minutes so well, it is still possible for tears to well up at the joy of the pain and the pain of the joy ahead and behind you.
Autumn has a way of doing that to you. The tenor of light can lead to that inner light so precious to us all.
Last summer at this time, my significant other was in the final stages of taper for the Ironman in Madison, Wisconsin. She had trained through heat and rain and cold going all the way back through spring. I did a fair amount of that training with her. We did a Century (my first) in June. Rode the Horribly Hilly course too, a relative monster of a ride with a 2000 foot climb at the finish and 18% grades along the way.
The full Ironman distance is simply no trifle. Some of us recognize that without engaging in the Grand Experiment. Personally, I feel no compunction to do the dastardly deed of the full distance. I’m quite happy to be working toward an Olympic. And while I did not quite get the swimming up to snuff this year to take that on, I’m in the pool and making exciting progress going into the winter. By next spring I expect to transform from a dragonfly nymph into a winged dragonfly. But I still won’t do the butterfly stroke. That might have to wait a bit.
Now that I’m a hard-working senior athlete who still finishes in the top 25% of most races, my fears revolve around the fact that triathlon is still a relatively new sport to me. Getting over fears associated with open water swimming has taken place in increments. And with experience, confidence has grown.
This species of Running Creature vacillates between sticking to a prescribed running route and taking what is offered by circumstance such as traffic lights. The Decisive Drifter is often seen running in place glancing nervously at a watch or Garmin, adjusting their hat or shorts or crossing arms over the breast to cover erect nipples under a running bra. All these behaviors fall under the category of evolutionary adaptation known as “redirected aggression” as exhibited by birds that grow anxious and engage in “normal” activities such as “bill-wiping” when danger approaches. Decisive Drifters are a common species through their range, which is the entire world. Sometimes they can be seen in small groups on street corners, chittering and chattering to each other while making strange motions with their arms. This may or may not be associated with mating rituals, or it may just be an innate response to sweaty armpits.
This Running Creature rarely finishes a run without raising their phone above their head to take a groundward facing self portrait to post on Instagram and share through Facebook and Twitter and ten other social media all linked by a sharing app loaded with 1300 other Selfies of said Creature running in some country that isn’t really identifiable because the scenery is not really identifiable when the camera is pointed toward the ground. Typically the Caption on these photos reads: “Just finished a great run! Wish you could be as runnie as me!”
Summer gear needs to be easy-on, easy-off. It needs to breathe and go with just about anything else you put on your body.
One of the problems never solved on my former road bike, the Felt 4C, was a difficulty in getting the chain to move from the small ring to the big ring. The derailleur was Dura-Ace and the setup was quality Shimano. So it wasn’t the quality of the equipment. Mechanics and friends fussed with the gearing but it never quite felt clean when shifting into the bigger ring. It would pause or slip off at crucial moments.
From character we move to the broader concept of worldview. That is the foundational set of beliefs that inform one’s perspective about everything from the structure of the universe to the leaning of our politics.
Like it or not, most human beings grapple with the challenges of a career. Our working lives or vocation are expressions of who we are. This can be transplanted, of course, into avocation, and many athletes find satisfaction in this regard. Their personalities become immersed in a sport and that becomes an identity. But when injury or other circumstance knocks that chain off the gears, life can get complicated. Friend networks get strained, and even spousal relationships when one person continues in the sport and the other is forced to the sidelines. Humility is important in getting one’s “career” back on track in any case. But so is a solid sense of personal pride and recognition of individual value. Those are some of the hardest attributes to keep on track in the face of career loss. But it’s crucial to survival in every sense.
In life, that might mean your backyard with trees wafting in the breeze, or next to a river, where flecks of light shimmer off the surface.Or watch some clouds form and move past. Let the gears of existence move without your effort and you may well find yourself moving in new directions.
Which is why it felt so marvelous to pedal up the road north through Fermi, past a tall row of secretive pines and broad fields opposite the woods where people exercise their dogs and coyotes also frolic and lay down their scent to vex the domesticated hounds. Such is the balance between city and country life. The lines of domestication often get blurred.
This morning at swim I arrived five minutes late and struggled to get my gear into place. Finally, things were ready and I wandered over to the dry erase board to study the assigned workout. Bullets swim coach Chris Colburn pens it all out so you can see what you’re supposed to do each day. Typically none of us can memorize the whole set at that time of day so you’ll see swimmers perched at pool’s edge with goggles up on their heads squinting to read the next set.
