Coach Born between Chris Cudworth and Bill Creamean circa 1972.
For closing insights on a fun and meaningful two years of cross country at Kaneland High School, I called up Coach Richard Born to discuss his coaching career with the program.
He started coaching Kaneland cross country in 1968. He was a science teacher at the school, and was approached by Kaneland track coach and athletic director Bruce Peterson to consider taking over the cross country program. That conversation likely generated from Born’s teaching association with another Kaneland legend, Harold Anderson, a chemistry teacher.
“We worked together in the science department,” Born recalled. “And I think he mentioned to Peterson that I might make a good coach.”
Born inherited a program in its infancy. He took it from a 4-4 record in its early stages to a 14-3 dual meet record and qualifying through districts for sectionals in just five years.
He laughed in recalling how the program was pretty basic at its beginning. “Back then, Coach Peterson would drive the kids in a truck out to County Line Road and tell them to run back. It was a lot quieter back then. You couldn’t do that nowadays.”
Born’s background in track was helpful in the early stages of his coaching career. It also helped that his sharp and clear voice could be heard at some distance, a benefit in the sport of cross country.
He recalled with pride the cross country course mapped out in Elburn Forest Preserve. “They manage it differently for wetlands now,” he noted. “So the course isn’t even possible any more.”
Elburn was a rugged and challenging course, a pure cross country experience if there ever was one. The opening mile with its increasingly steep hill, a trek through thick woods and a mile time near the entrance… was an immersion in every possible sensation related to running. The deep shade and changing leaves. The crunch of gravel underfoot. Emerging from the woods to hear the mile times called out….”5:10, 5:11…”
Coach Eddington, the team, and Coach Richard Born.
Born was ably assisted by assistant Coach Larry Eddington, a soft-spoken former miler whose running acumen was valuable in the coaching of high school kids. Together the two of them built a foundation for Kaneland cross country that has lasted for fifty years.
One of Born’s fondest memories is the first Little Seven Conference team victory in 1972. “It was basically dark when the meet finished,” Born recalled. “And we only beat Oswego by one point.”
His other favorite recollections center on the Kaneland Invitational, a meet that athletic director Bruce Peterson favored with Richard Born proposed it. A tremendous amount of resources and human helpers go into conducting a meet like that. Inviting the teams, organizing the race and having it be well received year-after-year is a reward that only coaches fully understand. Giving kids the opportunity to compete and grow from the experience is the principal benefit of coaching.
Rich Born did that really well. And while my family situation changed and we moved to another town and another school the winter after my sophomore year in cross country, I’ve always wanted to publicly thank Richard Born and Larry Eddington for the guidance and encouragement they gave all of us at Kaneland.
It was a strange feeling for me to go back to the Kaneland Invitational that next year and run against my former teammates. But they were on a mission of their own by then anyway. The Knights won the Little Seven Conference again the year after I departed. “We won it by a larger margin,” Born recalled.
It helped me realize that no one is irreplaceable. We all try to make our mark and then life rolls on. Life, and even death, awaits us no matter where we are. “A great man once told me that death smiles at us all,” says the Maximus character in the movie Gladiator, “All any man can do is smile back.”
At fifteen years old I had no idea what type of life lay ahead for me, or anyone. What I am grateful for is the smiles earned and given along the way. That was certainly the case in those early days of running. Smiles all around.
During the 1972 cross country season, our top runner Bill Creamean fought back problems most of the year. Despite his struggles, he led us in the early meets and at the end of the season. But during the middle, he missed a meet or two. That meant it was time for the rest of us to stand up and fill the gap.
The typical Top 3 finish on the team was Creamean-Kresse-Cudworth. The peak of that order was winning our own Kaneland invitational on September 23. Creamean ran the three-mile course in 16.:11, Kresse was our second man at 16:30 and I followed him one second behind at 16:31. But our fourth and fifth men Merid Dates (16:49) and Jim Fay (16:55) were what gave us that thrilling victory on our own turf.
Three days later, we raced Burlington Central. That day, Creamean’s back gave him troubles and I found myself in the lead for the Kaneland Knights, finishing first for our team in 1724 on a hilly layout. The next race at Oregon it was my day to suffer a bit, and I was fourth man for the team at 1743. I recall being really tired from all the racing and wanting to quit.
Right for the day
Then came a bright, clear day on October 12. My legs felt great again and my fitness was sharp. Every stride in the fresh fall air felt eager and determined. I took my first varsity win as a cross country runner in 17:11 on the home Kaneland course.
It’s a strange feeling the first time you win an entire race. I hadn’t experienced that on the sophomore level because my teammate Kirk Kresse was always a few seconds faster.
I remember walking out of the finish chute and turning around to watch another teammate, Bill Sanders, come trucking through the finish line for one of his best performances as second man. Then came Kresse, Fay and Dates. Bill Creamean couldn’t run that day. But we’d all stepped up and done the job.
That’s the real beauty of cross country as a sport. It is individual efforts that add up to team success. There is no “handing off” a football or passing a basketball. Every stride is an effort you own. The finish results are the same way. You can truly say “I did it!” and not feel falsely proud.
Thankfully, Bill Creamean recovered for the Kane County meet and the Little Seven Conference championship on a Halloween afternoon of December 31, 1972.
We ran the race in darkening conditions as we transitioned from fall into winter the time change. I believe that the guy leading the sophomore race took a wrong turn or cut a flag and was disqualified even though he had a big lead.
The gun went off for the varsity race and I recall being seriously relieved that my legs felt good and energetic that afternoon. The 20 dual and triangular meets were now behind us. All that was left to run were the conference meet and Districts, but those were far from my mind. Into the gloom went the lead runners Rich Flynn and Dave Bashaw. Flynn won in 1532 and Bashaw was second in 16:02. He was followed by Brian Lammers of Oswego, our prime team competition. Then Brent Ayer, Chet Krzciuk and our first man Bill Creamean at 1620. Beverly from Plainfield was sevenths, Brian Brown from Oswego was eight and I was ninth in 16:31 just ahead of an up-and-coming freshman Dave Finnestad.
Teammates Bill Sanders took 11th in 16:40, Kresse was 14th in 16:42 and senior Jim Fay was fifth man in 16:48.
That added up to Kaneland’s first-ever Little Seven Conference Championship. But only barely. Oswego was one point behind us. Close meets like that would become a large part of my high school and college running career.
Early successes
Its significance for the Kaneland program is hard to estimate. The program began in 1967 with a record of 4-4 and 4th place at conference. in 1968 the team went 2-8, in 1969 5-10. and in 1970, the year my brother ran for the team, they had a winning record of 9-8. That program progress took place under the guidance or Rich Born. We were 9-6 in 1971 and 14-3 in 1972. That set the stage for many years of success for Kaneland cross country.
At Districts that fall, held at St. Charles, the Kaneland team also advanced to Sectionals for the first time in its history. Wheaton Central won, and its team leader Tom Howell took first place in 15:03. He’d later become a teammate of mine at Luther College. The teams that qualified were much larger than our little school, as Elgin, Wheaton North, Kaneland and St. Charles advanced.
That race also featured future running friends and competitors well beyond the school years. They included Jim Brown of Wheaton St. Francis who took second, St. Charles’ Greg Birk was third, and Ron Piro of Wheaton North took fourth. I led the Kaneland finishers that day at 16:27, with Creamean, Sanders, Dates, Kresse, Fay and Tim Norris helping the team advance to the Glenbard West sectionals for the first time. That set the foundation for future success. The school has since had many All-State runners and won the Illinois state cross country championship in 2019.
Changes to come
That sophomore season would be my last as a Kaneland Knight. During the winter, my father began looking for a new place to live. There were many contributing factors to that decision. There was a gas shortage going on, and my mother worked as a teacher twelve miles east in St. Charles. Plus father lost his job at National Electronics during the economic downturn. Then he got involved in a network marketing scheme that cost our family serious money.
That meant our lives would be changing again. We’d only just moved to Elburn from Pennsylvania in the summer of 1970. Now we’d be changing schools, and I’d be making yet another new set of friends, and carrying forward whatever success and self-image I could muster.
When I asked my father 25 years later why we moved in the middle of the school year in 1972-73, I inquired, “Was it mom’s job? The gas shortage? Was it money?”
He answered, “No, I didn’t want your young brother to play basketball for that slow-down offense at Kaneland.”
My jaw dropped at his reply. I asked, “What about me? I was Class President! I was one of the top runners in cross country and track! I had all my friends out there!’
To which my father responded, “Oh, I knew you were a social kid. I knew you’d survive.”
Running helped me do that too. But first, there was a school year out at Kaneland to finish. That mean commuting every day from St. Charles to Maple Park. I could not believe what my father had arranged to make that happen.
Fred Bateman: Capital for a Day 2014 – Photo by Ken Trombatore
In writing this biography about 50 years of running experience, I come to points where the story seems to broaden because it occurs to me that the circumstance into which I entered was different than I imagined or understood. That realization moved me to inquire about the life of a running predecessor at Kaneland high school named Fred Bateman.
I knew Bateman’s name because he was the best runner at Kaneland cross-country program before I entered as a freshman. My older brother had run on the team with Fred, but as brothers we didn’t really talk much about that year. We had just moved into town from Pennsylvania that summer and I was so preoccupied with my own social world that I didn’t really realize what my brother was doing that fall.
But once my father placed me in the cross-country program, I heard the name of Fred Bateman. You know how it is: the best runner lives on as a program legend to which the next generation should aspire. Had I known much more about Fred Bateman at the time, I would have seen a few parallels.
The Fred Bateman story
As a freshman and sophomore, Fred played running back for the football team. In other words, he followed a path that at one point I thought I’d follow. My father thought better of that and led me into the cross country program. At Kaneland, the football program was filled with big, tough, red-meat-eating kids. Despite my own wirey toughness I didn’t belong in that environment and my father knew it. None of his kids would play football because he disliked the idea of torn up joints and the often graceless nature of the sport.
For Fred, there were also family issues with which he contended from a young age. His immediate relatives had a “reputation” in the communities around Kaneland high school. The Batemans were not a favored clan, shall we say. In the face of all the family stuff impacting his early life, Fred acted up in grade school. “I was not a good kid,” he admitted.
While my own family wasn’t affected by community reputation back east when I was in elementary school, there were enough internal conflicts in our family that I also acted up during the late elementary school years. I spent a year starting fights and struggling through school. That was my way of dealing with social pressures.
Chip on the shoulder
By the time Fred reached high school, that chip on his shoulder had reduced some. But not entirely. Football was a good way to bang into people with permission. There was just one problem. One of the coaches for the program had a brutal attitude toward his players. During a school day, that coach saw Fred with his eyes closed at a desk. “I was concentrating,” he related. “But that guy thought I was sleeping.”
The coach shoved Fred out of his chair so hard that his head struck another desk. He’s fairly sure there was a concussion involved. He couldn’t see right for days, and had trouble remembering things. Despite that incident, Bateman showed up for football practice and kept performing well.
Bateman lasted another year in the football program and was good enough to be a running back for the varsity. By that time, he had serious misgivings about his future with the program. He was always a good runner in the endurance events in track and field, so he switched sports to cross country. “Plus, I liked Coach Born and Eddington,” he recalled.
Crazy advice
However, a Kaneland track coach had given him instructions on how to train that affected his ultimate success in high school. “He told me I needed to run ten miles in the morning every day before school,” he noted. “So that’s what I did. And five miles in the morning on meet days. Then I’d do the regular workouts with the rest of the team.”
The coach also told him he needed to run “like a gazelle.” “So I developed a habit of overstriding,” he admits. They nicknamed me “The Gazelle” for the way I ran.”
Bateman led the team his junior and senior years, setting the course record and building the early legacy of the cross-country program. “At one point Larry Eddington pulled me aside and explained that I didn’t need to run so much.
Academic success
Fred was doing well as a student through it all. Proof of his academic talent would take time to surface. With his grades and SAT scores both at high levels, especially in chemistry, he’d attracted the attention of the Ceramic Engineering program at the University of Illinois. But when the letters of invitation came to his home, someone in his household threw them away.
Finally, a Kaneland guidance counselor pulled Fred aside and got him lined up to attend Illinois on an ROTC scholarship. He enrolled and did well. Ultimately he decided to switch to Computer Science as a major.
College experiences
Along the way, Fred tried out for the track and field team as a sophomore. He wound up in a mile trial against some well-known names from the University of Illinois: Lee Labadie, Mike Durkin and Craig Virgin. All of them were world-class runners capable of Sub-4 in the mile. “They were all far faster than me,” he admitted. “But I ran a 4:11 or 4:12 behind them. I only beat one guy in that race.” He also ran a 9:17 two-mile in club meets.
Lee LaBadie in track and field.
His recollections of his running successes through college were mixed. “A coach finally told me to shorten my stride,” he confessed. “He also told me not to run so much,” Fred said with an ironic laugh. He recalls getting similar advice from a Geneva high school coach who met Fred and heard about his training during his career at Kaneland. The fact of the matter is that early advice often sticks, and some habits are hard to break.
Ultimately, Bateman turned his full attention to studies at Ilinois. His competitive running career at that point essentially came to an end. It did help him get through the social side of life. The tough little kid from the family with a “bad reputation” had to clear a few invisible hurdles in life. Some tripped him up a little, but not all.
Moilers
Learning about Fred’s journey made me think back to some of the perceptions I held going into high school, and how running helped me transition through that period in life. The summer before that first year in high school, there were rumors floating around that any freshmen who got “out of line” would get beat up on the spot. “Freshmen are Moilers,” an upper classman threatened me a few weeks before school started. I never looked up the term “moilers” until now, but back then it meant someone not worthy of respect.
Moiler: To exert one’s mental or physical powers, usually under difficulty and to the point of exhaustion.
The term “moiler” was a deep insult at the time. It was used as a form of class-related denigration to strike fear into kids entering high school. The dread was real enough that it served as a form of authoritarian control. Some of my present political leanings stem from experiences like that. I’m suspicious of anyone that leads with that style of communication. We see it at all levels of society, even to the top of our governmental institutions. It also wells up in deplorable fashion through culture wars.
When I think about the treatment Bateman received from that abusive football coach, and some of the social pressures he faced in that era, it makes me glad that society has put progressive social constructs in place to provide a more balanced and positive atmosphere in this world.
But there are no guarantees.
No guarantees
Just recently I read about an incident in an area football program in which a pair of freshman were held to the ground while older players shoved broomsticks up their anus. The school and courts both refused to call it “hazing” because it was not technically described as a “rite of passage.” The euphemism of law is one of the most damaging of all constructs in society.
Initially, these football players received deferential treatment in the face of abuse allegations.
There have been other reported incidents of such treatments over the last five years. In 2016 five Wheaton College players were accused and ultimately punished for their violent abuse of a fellow player. All this all took place at an institution that calls itself a Christian college. The college initially defended the football players before accepting the testimony of the victim. That illustrates why I’ve written a book titled “Honest-To-Goodness: Helping Christianity Find Its True Place in the World.” People too often find excuses to abuse positions of power and authority in this life, and that includes religion.
Protecting civility and social justice
It takes vigilance, perseverance, and courage to protect civility in every culture on earth. Some dismiss early childhood and high school experiences as having no harmful or long-term effects, but they are wrong. Just this week, it was announced that the case in which a former high school wrestler that was supposed to receive $3.5M in a hush money settlement with ex-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is coming to trial. The name of the defendant will likely be revealed as part of the testimony, and that seems a shame. Hastert rose to a position of great power in this country while keeping his abusive nature a dark secret. He was long depicted as this likable, friendly “coach” that rose to political success from humble roots. It was a nice story. But it wasn’t fully true.
People like Hastert destroy lives whiles imposing their will upon the world. That defendant will now have to relive his experiences and have his name made public fifty years after the incidents took place. I would argue that America is itself damaged by the corrupt nature of men like Dennis Hastert. It seems that the higher these abusers rise in society, the harder it is to hold them accountable.
I met my own share of dismissive or emotionally abusive teachers along the way, but for the most part, I was lucky. I’m thankful that there are still so many people of good influence in this world. I’m grateful to have largely experienced encouragement from teachers, coaches and others in leadership roles. That’s a big reason why I’m writing this series 50 Years of Running.
At the same time, experiences of loss and fear and injustice are just as formative as the wins and moments of acceptance and triumphs. As they say, “That’s life.” And as I say, “It is important to talk about it.”
During the 1972 cross country season at Kaneland High School, the program started to fulfill its potential in new ways. The Varsity and Sophomore programs both finished with 14-3 records for the year. The schedule of 17 dual and triangular meets was standard for the time, and set up many scenarios for team drama over the course of the season.
One of the things I loved about that team was the mix of personalities on the squad. From the calm and understated strength of its leader Bill Creamean, to the raw talent and quiet inspiration of Kirk Kresse, the interactions were formative on many levels. I don’t recall much about the bus trips, though there were many, but a few little moments stand out in my mind. One of these was a trip through the cornfields in which I shared a seat with Kirk. We were both starting to suffer nearsightedness, and he demonstrated how he overcame the problem by pulling his eyelid tight. Somehow that felt like he could see better. I doubt that was true, and I wore glasses all that season, but didn’t like it.
Such are the tiny things that form team bonds. During runs, the banter. In the locker rooms, the joking and teasing from shower to changing. During school hours, the nod while moving down the hallway and seeing a teammate. Knowing that we were doing something special. That was what made the year so fun. We were working hard. And we were winning.
Unfortunately, that was not the case for the football team at Kaneland that year. The Little Seven was a tough football Conference. Schools like West Chicago and Geneva fielded exceptional teams. Kaneland was filled with big guys, but it was still difficult to win. If I recall correctly, our cross country team was 11-1 at one point and the football program had earned just one win on the season. I may be off a bit on those recollections, but it was definitely a season in which our success far exceeded that of the more popular sport.
There should not have been any sense of competition between the two sports, yet there were frequent enough comments from football players about cross country being a “pussy sport” that it was triumphal to stand up before a school sports assembly mid-season and be recognized for our accomplishments thus far. The football team couldn’t say much at that point. Their record sucked.
There was just one problem with our momentary glory. Coach Born had ordered a set of long-sleeve orange training shirts as a reward for our progress. We were instructed to wear them for the assembly. But after the first wash, the shirts shrank because they were 100% cotton. Stiff as a board. The bottoms of the shirt flared out and could not be tucked in. Instead they blossomed around our waist in a semi-ridiculous fashion. It was not anyone’s fault. The materials in those days weren’t sophisticated in style, material, or construction. I recall the desperate embarrassment in trying to keep that shirt from sticking out like a short dress. Heading back to the locker room, one of my football friends snarked, “Nice skirt.” Looking back, it seems comic now. But to a 15-year-old obsessed with social acceptance, that was not a high point.
We kept on rolling just the same. The only teams to whom we lost were a tough and dismissive Dekalb squad. We ran well but lost by two points 27-29. Cary Grove and its conference champion Rich Flynn also beat us 27-28. We ran on the CG campus and Rich led us on the course tour. Midway through the tour he peeled off and sprinted through the heart of the football team’s practice, shouting “KILL KILL KILL!” I loved Rich Flynn for that one. He was a wildly talented guy, and I’d have liked to have gotten to know him better.
At Oswego we beat them 21-38. The race started and finished on the track during a football game intermission. At one point we ran under the stands, and Oswego fans dumped Cokes on our heads. I was so glad we beat them that day. But they would come back in a big way come conference time.
The small school of Oregon beat us 20-34. I don’t recall who their best runners were, but from the score, they were a clearly superior team. Their course was a wicked affair, set on a hilly golf club. That club is no longer in operation, but one can still see where the fairways once ran between lines of trees. Talk about ghostly memories.
In the invitationals, we were 2nd of 21 teams at Ottawa and 1st of 18 teams at the Kaneland Invitational. That was the first time we won our own meet, a major program accomplishment.
We were 3rd of 10 teams at the Kane County meet, 4th of 15 at Districts. But the capper of the season was a first place in the Little Seven Conference meet at Plainfield. Kaneland had 56 points. Oswego had 57. Every single guy on our team counted that day. I got to know Brian Brown from Oswego during the season. He was one of those chill guys that would talk to you before and after meets. He later ran for Augustana, as I recall. I almost attended that school as well. But I’d see him again as a runner for Luther College. Oswego’s outstanding freshman Dave Finnestad was a place behind me at conference, and he’d become one of the finest athletes to emerge from that school along with Ty Wolf, who went on to run for the University of Illinois, I believe.
The season wasn’t all joy and glory. Our best runner Bill Creamean struggled with back problems all season. He was awarded the humorously titled Stored Heat Award for all the analgesic rubbed on his back during the season to keep the pain away. Despite those limitations, he competed in almost every meet.
Kirk Kresse and I tied for individual total points earned on the season at 145. Bill Creamean was right behind at 144. Merid Dates had 81. Jim Fay, 59. Bill Sanders, 57. That shows the balance we brought to the table. My longtime friend Tim Norris was a solid sixth man all season, as were Chuck Gebauer, Ken Johnson, John Lowe and Chuck McGee. We ran all those miles together and turned our dreams into reality.
At the end of the season I took a drawing that I’d done of a world-class 10K race and re-drew it depicting our Top 7 in the same positions. That drawing appeared on the cover of the season summary booklet Coach Born gave us all. I treasure that year, but things were all going to change in a hurry for me in the year to come.
Following each cross country season, Kaneland coach Rich Born put together a results booklet containing training advice, inspirational quotes and––after my freshman year––a cover comprised of newspaper stories about our success. I remember feeling a great sense of pride and accomplishment on receiving that booklet, which I’ve kept all these years because it marked the official beginning of my running career.
Looking through the booklet these days, I see that my initial 3-mile times were in the neighborhood of 18:00 to start the season. Far more Varsity meets in those days were held at distances from 2.56 to 2.75 miles. My best effort of the year overall was a 10:40 two-mile at the LIttle Seven Sophomore Conference meet, where we took second to Plainfield.
Building on successes like these was the goal going into the season in 1972. While we were a small school of 750 total students, Coach Born noted in several cases that we’d begun to beat teams from much larger schools.
I recall the excitement in the locker room after a headline in the Dekalb Chronicle declared, “Night Juggernaut rolls over Trojans.” These days a headline like that would generate snarky laughter in the locker room. But that day, a teammate asked, “What’s a juggernaut?” That led to a vocabulary lesson, in which we learned what a juggernaut is. It felt good to learn that we were building a reputation as a force to be reckoned with.
So yes, despite my late summer grumpiness at being called skinny by everyone I knew, I arrived on campus for the August 28 opening cross country workouts with a high degree of anticipation and excitement. I loved the feeling of joining those teammates again.The early years of the Kaneland program had been built on the shoulders of its top runner Fred Bateman. We’d followed in his footsteps as a young team and had success at both the soph and varsity levels. Now it was our turn to carry on and build on that tradition. We set high goals for ourselves, yet all goals are achieved by increments. So it was that we took to hard training.
One of the measures of potential success were the times we posted for the Campus Perimeter. We’d start on the track and head west to the grass along Meredith Road, then turn south in a long, arcing path around the ring of trees surrounding the south end of campus. I wrote about this experience in the illustrated article I published in Runner’s World in the late 1990s. It read, “A rut in the grass. That was our training loop in high school. Every scrawny tree was a checkpoint in a perimeter around the campus, carved out of cornfields.”
I wasn’t the fastest guy on that perimeter loop. My teammates Kirk Kresse, Bill Creamean, Jim Fay and Merid Dates all bested me. But the confidence it gave us all to run under 4:10 for that loop was enough to set us up for other successes, to prepare for race pace knowing you had even more in the tank if necessary. For the kick, especially. Not only could we feel the improvement, now we could see it. Right there. In Black and White. It told us, “You’re faster now.”
And yes, I got my recollected facts wrong in the Runner’s World article. The goal was for the Top Five to break 4:10 for the perimeter. But it doesn’t change the sense of accomplishment.
Most cross country runners recall a similar test of endurance and speed in their own programs. It might be a hill they climbed, as we did at Johnson’s Mound. Or a specific track workout that resulted in a team breakthrough. Almost any kind of test will work if it challenges runners to go beyond what they think they can do and prove that there’s something more there, if they give it everything they’ve got
In fifty years of running, there have been many such moments and tests. I’m grateful for them all. There’s nothing else like success in running to make you feel like you’ve accomplished something real.
A sketch dashed off in anger and frustration at being called “skinny” all the time… the night before cross country season began in 1972.
As fifteen-year-old kid during the summer of 1972, I was frustrated by the fact that I’d sustained a chipped bone in my elbow that erased the summer baseball season. Neither could I go out and run with the cast on. So my exercise was limited to some weekly tennis sessions with my mother.
Many an afternoon was spent lying on the dull red carpet in our Elburn living room, head between two speakers listening to music and almost dozing off. It wasn’t the best prescription for good mental health perhaps, but it’s what kids in the 70s did when there was little else to do.
My favorite album that summer was George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass.” It has recently been re-issued in celebration of its 50th Anniversary, and it is tempting to buy it because I still have the original three-record vinyl. There are serious philosophical and spiritual insights on that album that still ring true to this day…
Watch out now, take care Beware of the thoughts that linger Winding up inside your head The hopelessness around you In the dead of night Beware of sadness
Lord knows the world recognizes the morose nature of some teenagers. Some kids go through entire phases of their life in Goth mode or hide themselves under their hair, their clothes or whatever method it takes to hold the world at bay. There are so many things that seem to poke at you through those teen years. The incessant prodding of parents. The teasing rivalry of siblings. The battle for control and approval within friendships. The desire for attention from whatever gender you desire. My brothers once accurately called it the “social maelstrom” and they were absolutely right.
On August 2 of that summer, I received a letter from Coach Born with an encouraging note on the bottom. He wrote, “Chris–I hope that you have been recovering from your elbow injury in baseball. Good luck on your x-rays on the 6th. Was glad to hear from you. Have an enjoyable August. R Born.”
His note was written on the summer cross country letter to “Prospective Cross Country Member.” That little note meant the world to me at the time.
The x-rays turned out clear. The cast came off on the 6th of August and I was free to start getting back in shape. Not that I was fat or anything. Quite the opposite. As a rail-thin kid without an ounce of fat on my body, I suffered far too many comments and criticism about being skinny. I was sensitive as hell about it. By the end of August, the day that cross country was to begin, my frustrations had come to a boil. I pulled out a piece of notebook paper and scrawled my anger out in pictures and words.
I wrote:
“I feel pretty goddamn bitter. Every fucker this side of Peoria is calling me skinny. Any fucker who wants to fight me can fuck off. I’m gonna whomp the hell off Creamean, Kresse, Sanders, Norris, Dates, Fay and Myself. Zap first time out I run a suckin 4:21 Perimeter. I’ll break goddamn 4:00s aint nobody gonna lick me.”
Tomorrow night is August 28th it fuckin rained tonight. (Elburn Days) Parade called off. Maybe I’ll act like Mr. Stud for the hell. Tomorrow night I’s a gonna hustle all hell. Heh heh ha ha ah.”
Reading those words, the lyrics from Beware of Darkness cry out to me again:
It can hit you It can hurt you Make you sore and what is more That is not what you are here for
The teenage years are always a period of coming to grips with emotions and moods. It’s quite likely that by missing out on baseball and much that I loved about summer as a whole, I was depressed during the summer of 1972. Later in life I learned to recognize the signs of depression and symptoms of anxiety that contribute to it. The most important thing that I learned along the way is that running helps me with both those conditions. Having a physical and mental release for depression and anxiety is an acknowledged form of mental health management. It’s not a cure-all, but it helps. The release of endorphins helps rebuild a constructive attitude and a dose of competitive dopamine ironically helps with anxiety. Add in exercise as a constructive way to manage ADHD as well. Basically, the more exercise I tend to get, the better I can concentrate.
And most of all, running helps with anger management. It is far better to go out and run your brains out than focus all that negative energy in ruminative thoughts of revenge. The ironic part is that an angry runner may be an effective competitor as long as they understand how to channel those feelings and that energy in constructive fashion. It’s not always an easy balance. Down the line in this series, I’ll address that relationship in a deeper way.
Yet looking back, I recognize that running helps with all these psychologies. It’s still how I roll. Rather than dealing with it all in silence, I try to help others with their psycho-social challenges as well. It’s not trite to recognize that hearing the problems others face is a great way to put your own issues in perspective.
As for my being “too skinny” as a fifteen-year-old kid, that was part of my native physiology in much the same way that a propensity for moodiness is part of my mental soul. Combined with artistic sensibilities, this is who I am. That is why, fifty years after taking up running seriously at age fourteen, I’m still out there running on the roads and trails, reconciling the thoughts and dreams that still run through my head. I get all my best ideas out there. I wick off anger at what the world dishes out. I connect with nature and see how many people abuse and are separated from it. And I sing to myself, Beware of Darkness…
Coming out of spring track into the summer of 1972, I was excited to get back to playing baseball. The Elburn Babe Ruth team had a fantastically fun team the year before. We traveled to small towns like Hampshire, Huntley and Lake-in-the-Hills. It felt like the movie Field of Dreams, with close buddies enjoying all the sensations of baseball. Roger Thompson even tried chewing tobacco in the car on the way up Route 47. When he tried to spit, the gooey saliva strung from his mouth and started floating toward the back window. From the backseat, I rolled up the glass just in time to prevent his gob of slobber from striking me in the face. A few minutes later, we pulled the car over to let him get out and throw up. So much for chewing tobacco.
That summer I made the regional All-Star team and pitched the club to a near-win in the regional championships. I loved baseball. But during the summer of 1972, that was not to be…
Season opener
A hard-throwing fourteen-year-old. Nice Chuck Taylor’s kid.
We held practices and got ready for the first game, a home contest on the dirt field at Lions Park in Elburn. I was pitching that day and struck out the side in the first inning, then came up to bat. After lining a hit to center, I wound up on second base, stole third on a dropped pitch and was standing next to the third base coach who eased up next to me and said. “You can steal home. This pitcher won’t expect it.”
Always up for a challenge, I began a long walking lead and then took off running toward home plate. The pitcher was indeed surprised, and tossed the ball home. The huge catcher behind home caught the ball high and leaned toward third to block the plate. I slid under his tag and he came down on top of me in a huge, slumping fall. It felt like something sharp came loose in my left elbow as I lay there under his hulking catcher’s gear. He weighed around 200 lbs and I was a skinny 14-year-old just under 130 lbs.
I think I was called out, and waited for the massive catcher to get off me. He rolled away like an elephant seal disengaging from a beach battle. Then I tried to get up. Instantly I knew that something was wrong with my left arm. I pushed myself up with my right and retreated to the bench. There I sat, dusty and dazed. A few batters later it was time to go back out and pitch. I pulled on my baseball cap and picked up my glove and walked out to the mound. The moment that I went into a windup, a sharp pain ran from my elbow up to my brain and I stopped, stood there, and dropped my mitt in the dirt.
The coaches came out and we agreed that I couldn’t play anymore that day. After a trip to the doctor, we learned that I had chipped a bone in my elbow. It was the first injury of that kind I’d ever had. And it hurt.
No more baseball
That meant no more baseball that summer. The doc put a half cast around my arm and I was out of commission for weeks. Suddenly I realized there was another problem to address. How was I going to put in any miles of cross country training with a cast on my arm?
I wrote a letter to Kaneland’s cross country coach, Rich Born. He wrote back a note of encouragement that said something like, “Get better. We’ll see you in the fall.”
I knew that my Kaneland teammates would be out there plugging away all summer. One or two of them would run 1500 miles between June and August! A few others ran 1000 miles, and plenty of guys put in 500 miles. I ran zero. Well, maybe six if you count the one run that I did before the baseball accident. I’d gone out Keslinger Road and turned on Francis. Immediately I was surrounded by a large pack of baying, snapping dogs. Yelling and fending off the dogs, I broke free from the pack and tore off in a sprint up the dirty road toward Route 38. I’d been so scared from that encounter I had not run again the entire week.
That next weekend I chipped the bone in my arm. But once I got the cast on, I learned that I could play tennis well enough. The cast kept my arm at a 90-degree angle, but I could toss a tennis ball high enough to serve. So that’s what I did. My mother and I went down to Waubonsee Community College where there were nice tennis courts, and we played. Not to keep score. Just to play. She liked playing tennis with me because I did not criticize her like my father was known to do.
Running the paper route
A retro version of the original Huffy 3-Speed that I rode around Elburn. And yes, I rode the women’s model when my dad’s Huffy broke down.
I still had my paper route as well. That provided exercise every morning. I’d rise at 5:30 am and ride a Huffy 3-speed bike on a 3-4 mile route. I loved having that job. I made $8.50 a week and didn’t have to “collect” because the customers all paid for the subscriptions and delivery at Smith’s Bar-B-Cue in downtown Elburn. Smitty gave me a free chocolate donut and a Cherry Coke if I wanted it. Of course, during cross country season I turned down the offer. “I’m in training,” I told him proudly. He seemed to understand.
At night I’d ride around Elburn with my friends Eric Berry and Mark Strong. We’d ride past the homes of girls we liked, hoping they’d be outside so we could stop to talk. Sometimes they’d be out on the porch braiding each other’s hair or soaking up the cool evening air. But sometimes they’d have tough older boys visiting from other towns, so we’d stay away.
As the evening cooled, we’d tool around that small town with the streetlights blinking on. Above us in the purple sky, the nighthawks fluttered about with their raspy calls and the dogs would bark at us from the houses we rolled past. I loved the feel of bike tires on the smooth tar-covered roads. Occasionally a tar bubble would pop as the tire rolled over it. That was true summer, and we lived it.
Toward the end of July that year, I was allowed to get rid of the cast. The summer sweat had soaked into the wrappings of the cast and it stunk like road kill. When the doctor pulled the cast off the last time, the arm looked tender and frail under the fluorescent light in his office. He glanced up at my worried face and said, “You’ll need to get the arm back in shape.” He knew that his words meant more than that. I’d missed running all that summer.
Alternative training
As it turned out, I never did much summer running during my high school years. More typically I played basketball, baseball, and rode bikes or walked everywhere I needed to go. Come fall, I’d show up and start running and wound up leading the team every year anyway. Perhaps that was native ability, but whatever, it worked for me. Perhaps I lost an opportunity to be an even better runner by failing to run much during the summer months, but the other sports kept me in decent shape anyway. Plus with 21 meets to run every year, there was no shortage of opportunities to get in shape. For the most part, those first three weeks of hard running for cross country every fall whipped me into racing condition.
Once college came around, I did put in some summer miles. But I always remembered what Coach Born had told us going into the summer months. “If you can run through the heat in the month of July, you can run through anything.” That’s a thought that I’ve never forgotten, and sometimes while running on a hot July day, I think back to being a kid and realize that being a kid is what I needed to do at the time.
In this photo I’m lining up to long jump as one of Kaneland’s best track athletes Jeff Johnson, also a cross country teammate, flies toward the pit. My skinny legs were decent jumping tools, but not really.
Following a freshman basketball season in which the team’s emphasis on court fitness tailed off toward the end, I took a weekend off before turning out for track that following Monday. Their was a ritual in receiving cotton sweats and a set of gum-rubber-sole track shoes. That previous fall I’d worn both grey and black sweats as a competitor at both the sophomore and varsity letter. Somehow I thought that success would translate to a Varsity status in spring track as well.
That was not to be. Those credentials still had to earned, not given. The Kaneland track program was basically the only men’s sport offered in the spring. There were no baseball teams or soccer programs. The Athletic Director and head track coach Bruce Peterson saw to that. He wanted no competition for athletes, so there was no choice for me to play either of the sports I’d grown up playing in the spring.
But that was in a different state. Back East in Pennsylvania, my brothers had played both soccer and baseball. I’d likely have done the same if we’d stayed in Lancaster. But here we were in Illinois at a high school plopped down in the middle of sodden cornfields where the wind had nothing to stop it between northwest Alberta and the western edge of Elburn, Illinois.
Snow and cinders
Times have changed.
The Kaneland track was a deep bed of cinders. In late February or early March when track season started, there was no chance of running on that oval. Typically the entire campus was deep in snow. Even the parking lots were rife with slush left behind by the snowplows. That was our training grounds. It was a Love It Or Leave deal if there ever was one.
Basketball season lasted long enough that some of the track-only guys had two weeks of training before the rest of us showed up for workouts. The typical workout consisted of running one-lap intervals of between 600-800 yards around the asphalt parking lots that surrounded the school. We’d take off straight west in groups of like-talented runners, turn slightly northwest around the edge of the school and run smack into the cold winds tearing across the low-slung cornfields.
It was cold, miserable business on many afternoons. Those first couple weeks also hurt like hell. My indoor basketball lungs and short-sprint legs were of little help on those long outdoor intervals. The burning sensation would last well after each interval, so that starting the next lap was like skipping a needle across a revolving record. The same painful song played again and again. Sometimes it was impossible to tell one song from another. You just put your head down, pulled a wool cap farther over your ears, and started all over again.
The wry dreams and harsh realities of a freshman
My freshman year photo.
My memories of those days as a 14-year-old runner involve plenty of blown snot, dandruff, semen-stained underwear and cold longing for some comfort I could not identify. The same hormones that drove those physical realities also wrapped themselves around the stem of my brain and controlled my thoughts. In class each day, I’d be exhausted and stimulated at the same time. Those Kaneland girls were lovely distractions. Short skirts and tight shorts were everywhere. All I wanted to do is somehow impress them. Or at least one of them. I had a deep crush on one particular cheerleader. She was beyond cute and actually graced me with a night of close dancing one winter’s evening at the high school. So all was not futile. With an ounce of self-confidence perhaps it would have turned into an actual relationship. But that was not to be.
The problem with those young desires is that distant runners at that age and in that era were frequently a sorry sight. We’d come in from track practice with ruddy faces and snot-worn cheeks. Our hands would be red from the cold and stiff as hell. Once I lost a glove or mitten somewhere during an interval session and had to run the rest of the workout with one sleeve of my sweatshirt gripped around my fingers to ward off the sleet striking every bare part of our bodies.
I also recall many track athletes coming down with shin splints due to running on asphalt for weeks on end. The supposed cure for that condition was wrapping the entire calf from ankle to knee in a combination of Ace stretch bandages and athletic tape. The use of plastic heel cups was also common. Basically, anyone with a tiny bit of pronation or supination in their footstrike was susceptible to injuries of that type. It was thought that the heel cups would help. That is doubtful.
I was grateful not to experience any kind of injuries like that. It would be a couple years before the shoe industry caught up with the running movement. adidas had good track shoes already, and the SL-72 would arrive on the market in time for the Olympics in Munich. Somehow those shoes didn’t find their way to our cozy neck of the cornfields. Nike was still two years away from developing its Corsair shoes, and then it would be off to the races for that company with its waffle and air-soled shoes.
Indoor track
The goal of all the focused misery of winter training was to get in shape for the few indoor meets in which we competed. As a freshman, I was assigned to run the 880-yard “run” as it was called back then. Sometimes it would be listed as the 880-yard “dash. I soon learned that there were people capable of running that fast over the two-lap distance. One of them was my cross country teammate from the previous fall, Kirk Kresse. The other was my classmate Ron Ackerman, who in 1975 would become Illinois state champion in the 880. Those guys were subjected to some of the most difficult workouts I’d ever seen anyone do. I’d be running with the distance guys and watch Kirk and Ron do sets of twenty to thirty 300-yard intervals with just 30 seconds rest. There was some outright barfing involved. But by the time they graduated, each was running times in the low 1:50s. They had more talent and perhaps more guts than me.
I dutifully competed in the indoor 800 in several meets. We drove down to the University of Illinois for the Joe Cognal Relays. I was assigned to ride with Coach Peterson, who smoked a big green cigar the entire way down. My gut was sick and my lungs felt awful by the time we rolled into town. When the time for my race came, I didn’t feel like running at all. But I did, and though I’d run sub-2:30s in the first couple meets, I fell short of that standard. Coach Peterson asked me what was wrong that day, and without thinking I blurted, “It’s your stupid cigars!”
He looked at me oddly, then tipped his head back slightly and gave a quick chuckle. “Okay,” he responded. Nothing more was said. He didn’t smoke one on the way back home.
Outdoor track
When spring finally arrived and we could run on the track, I also participated in the high jump and long jump. I recall going 5’8″ as a freshman, which won a few sophomore meets. But my obsession with long jump was considerably less productive. I tried many times to jump farther than 18 feet as a freshman, but that was that. Again, some of that multiple-event participation was an odd mix of joy in competing in more than one thing, which I thought proved my athleticism. There was also the vain hope that something I did would be as impressive to girls as some of the more dynamic and outstanding athletes in the Kaneland track program. There were plenty of studs on those teams.
One of those was a fantastically tough quarter-miler known for his ability to close out a race. I don’t recall his name, but I do recall overhearing a conversation he was having with a cute girl that he knew. He was ribald in his approach. “Are we going out tonight?” he asked her.
“Only if you promise not to hurt me,” she replied. I tried not to show that I’d overhead that exchange, but I well recall the flash of her eyes as she responded. To this day, I still do not know what it meant. All I knew was that I was privy to a brand of interaction that for better or worse, was far out of my league.
All I wanted was to be noticed by the girls in the stands. “Please Lord,” I’d effectively mutter on a daily basis. “Let me do something big.”
Kaneland girls watching a sporting event.
Moving up in distance
Partway through that first track season, I mostly watched as my cross country teammates ran the mile races.That was longest distance offered freshman and sophomores at that time. I knew that I could beat those guys in the mile if given a chance. So I approached one of the coaches and told them, “I want to run the mile.”
“Oh, okay,” he responded to me. And then absently replied. “That’s longer you know. Are you sure you want to move up in distance?”
“I raced three miles in cross country last fall,” I responded. “Yes, I want to move up.”
In that first race, I set the freshman school record at 4:57. I remember the feeling of satisfaction on crossing the line in first place. I’d actually asserted myself on something that was important to me. I’d talked to adults and influenced my future.
In study hall the next day, one of my female friends actually turned to me and said, “I hear you broke a track record…” I blushed and said, “Well, it was just a freshman record. I’m hoping to get better you know.”
It wasn’t a world-beating time by any measure, and track is an unforgivingly harsh judge of good and bad efforts. Records are made to be broken, and it was, by quite a bit. Yet it felt good to glean something of merit during that first track season after a cold, thankless spring. It would set the stage for much better things ahead.
The faded mimeographed meet schedule no longer shows the names of our competition, but my Bic pen and pencial notations have survived for fifty years.
The Kaneland Cross Country team competed in 21 meets in 1971, my freshman year in high school. That wasn’t just the number of teams we competed against during duals and triangulars.That’s the total number of races we ran.
The weekly meet schedule consisted of Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday meets. We competed in individual meets against every Little Seven Conference team; Batavia, Geneva, Sycamore, Oswego, Plainfield, Cary Grove, and West Chicago. We also ran duals and triangular meets against schools from outside the conference; Hampshire, Burlington Central, Oregon, Sandwich, Stillman Valley, and others. We also hosted the Kaneland Invitational, ran in the Kane County Meet and a couple more invites, then finished the season with the conference meet, then Districts and Sectionals, if we made it that far.
Racing that often was considered normal back then. We didn’t view it as unusually hard, but later, when I joined a college program, the comments about “Illinois runners” centered on the idea that we were all “burned out” from racing too much. Perhaps there was some truth in that. Cross country programs don’t race nearly as much these days. Probably that’s a result of coaches from our era who recalled their intense racing days and took steps to lighten the meet load so that kids would not be burned out.
A ton of us still went on to long running careers. I still think all that racing was a great way to learn how to deal with all kinds of meets and circumstances. But I measured success in several ways. First there was how our team did. Then came my place on the team and in the race. Most of the final times were relative to the style of the course, but they still mattered to me. On my race commentary, I also included subjective emotional observations about my state of mind before and during the races. There were plenty of comments about nerves, pressure and fatigue. That’s part of running.
We didn’t always run a full three miles in cross country in those days. The standardization of that distance for high school races was still a year or two away. I also bounced up and down from running with the sophomore squad at two miles and varsity meets of 2.65 miles and up.
Times and distances from Kaneland Cross Country 1971.
I liked running varsity meets while sporting the Kaneland orange team shirts with the black-and-while epaulettes. I loved those uniforms. In this photo, you can almost see the velcro flaps on my Puma kangaroo-skin spikes.
We won the sophomore conference title that freshman year in cross country. It was the first conference team victory for Kaneland Cross Country. The following year, we won the Varsity Little Seven Conference meet as well. Those were foundational accomplishments for a program that was just a few years old in total. Even at that age, I understood what it meant to help build a winning program. Coaches Rich Born and Larry Eddington were a wonderful compliment to each other. We even had a team of statisticians that timed and tracked our performances at every meet.
Kaneland Runner Kirk Kresse leads our team off the starting line at the Kaneland Invite.
That freshman year was a true character-builder. Days after the season was over, basketball season started. In that sport, I wound up moving up from the freshman to the sophomore squad . After a winter of indoor hoops, the indoor track season started up in late February or early March. There was really no rest for the weary in those days. It was all part of being an athlete.
I was proud to be on this team, not so proud, as you can see, in the photo for the freshman squad. I think I had some homework overdue when this photo of the freshman basketball team was taken.
I was too young to have read anything by Hunter S. Thompson when I was a freshman in high school. But it would have been good for me to absorb some of the fearless antics of the Gonzo journalist that hung out with Hell’s Angels and got beat up during his efforts to integrate with the traveling band of motorcyle thugs and their culture of confrontation and violence.
Thompson wasn’t afraid of much in this world. At least, he waded into situations that most of us would avoid. Often that fearlessness was fueled by massive amounts of drugs and alcohol, so he wasn’t much of a role model for most of us. But there is something to be said for facing life with the belief that you’ll pretty much get through anything you encounter if you’re willing to kill it, rhetorically or not.
Stepping to the line
A pre-race counseling session is often about overcoming doubts and fears.
That first time you step to the line as a young runner in cross country, the sensations are overwhelming if you let them drag you under. Typically those first meets are held in late summer heat, so there’s sweat soaking your hair and trickling down bare arms. Standing beside you are teammates that you’ve trained with, and who represent the same school. Yet you still want to beat them in the race because that determines how valuable you are as an individual runner. The whole experience can create conflicted emotions.
Yet Hunter S. Thompson never seemed to feel conflicted. One of his most famous quotes is, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
He also described his approach to life in terms that make most hearts tremble: “The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
The same can be said of distance running. Once the gun goes off, the entire race is an attempt to run on the edge: of exhaustion, fear, and pace. To really improve, one has to push through the edge of those things to find out what lies beyond. It could be collapse and exhaustion. But it could also be transcendent. Remember those breakthroughs? The days when it finally came together. When you actually ran past fear and into anticipation?
That is what runners live for. And it starts the day you realize that’s what it’s all about.
Seasoning
That yin and yang of fear and excitement is how I felt that entire first season of freshman cross country. Dealing with fear is a key aspect of learning how to run and compete. Fear begets nerves. Nerves turn up more fears. It’s possible to ruminate yourself right into the ground with questions swirling around your head.
“Will I run well?”
“Can I beat my newfound rival?”
“What if I fail? What will people think?”
“Are the girls watching me?”
And fear? It also leads to loathing. That sensation of self-disrespect is the worst enemy of any runner. Kids are especially prone to self-loathing due to peer pressure and other factors at work on the young mind. Add in parental approval and sibling rivalry and the mix can get a little toxic. All you can hope to do is run past it all.
No waiting around
So I’ll toss out another quote by Hunter S. Thompson that fits here: “A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
That’s about the most truest thing I’ve ever read. It certainly applies in the realm of distance running, especially in those formative years. Every second of every race is an exercise in self-determination. Finding success in running is the exact opposite of procrastination. You cannot put off until tomorrow what you need to do today. It doesn’t pay to wait around and see what will happen next. If you’re not moving, you’re not improving. That’s not an absolute, because we all need rest too. But effectively, that is how it works.
It also comes down to this: fear and loathing can have no permanent place in your psyche if you want to succeed in distance running. That’s why I treasure those early experiences in Kaneland cross country. They taught me lessons that my father tried to install in me, but I was too stubborn to receive. I learned how to accept responsibility, to do the work, and put that effort to good use on any given day. I think my father saw that in me eventually.
Stepping up
It’s not that I had never stepped up to the plate in sports before. Already by the age of thirteen I’d gotten good enough as a pitcher to play American Legion baseball with players three-to-five years older than me. I’d sunken a half-court shot with three seconds left to win a basketball game against an undefeated 8th grade rival the year before. I wasn’t afraid to compete. Yet sometimes, fear of success is as great an impedance to individual development as fear of failure. You have to learn to accept the next level of pressure and achievement to continue to improve. For some athletes, that’s a source of fear and loathing unto itself.
Learning to deal with success and how to handle it among teammates and peers is a critical aspect of self-actualization and personal development. It meant something more to compete for a real school team. I’d watched my brothers do it. Now it was my turn.
That meant facing the fears that come with lining up against older, faster, tougher runners. There were plenty of them around in those days. Illinois cross country was a hotbed of top-level athletes in the early 1970s, including a guy named Craig Virgin that in 1972 would set a course record at the state meet in Peoria. I was there that day. Little did any of us know that his time of 13:51 would stand as the course record for almost 50 years before it was broken. Many great runners tried, and barely missed over those five decades. All I can say is that watching him run that day inspired me, yet it also planted a bit of fear and loathing in me. Could I ever come close to running anywhere that fast? I sincerely doubted it.
Honest take
My pencil drawing of Frank Shorter circa 1971 as a freshman in high school. I was obsessed with running in all its forms, and considered Shorter a keen inspiration along with Steve Prefontaine.
Frankly (pun intended, see illustration above) I was not afraid of trying. Instead, I was being honest with myself. While I set goals and met many of them over fifty years of running, improving along the way, I also learned that I was not a national or world-class level athlete. Even at the age of fourteen, I saw that while I had talent, there were others that had more. Much more. The thrilling truth is that once in a while I was able to beat some of them on a given day. But many times not.
I would never reach the levels that runners like Craig Virgin, or my former track teammate Ron Ackerman who ran at University of Kentucky along with Tom Burridge, a conference rival from Batavia. I revered the likes of Frank Shorter, and later Bill Rodgers. Of course Steve Prefontaine was a favorite icon as well. I imagined myself running in their footsteps in some way. As Hunter S. Thompson described it, the lifelong pursuit of running falls into the category of obsession pretty well when he said, “Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.”
Drama child
If that seems a bit dramatic, then perhaps you’ve forgotten how the mind of a fourteen-year-old kid (or a 64-year-old man) sometimes works. Failing was worse than death to me. Losing felt worse than torture. I resented the people that caused me to fail or lose. I wanted to beat them more than anything in the world. My brothers branded me The Mink for the competitive fury I’d show in a fit of spit and determination. Even Kaneland Coach Rich Born once stated in a newspaper interview, “Cudworth isn’t afraid to compete with anyone.”
That was accurate on the surface. Yet not completely true. I was afraid in many ways. But that’s the thing. Being nervous is part of competition. We all have self-doubts and fears. Killing them off is the height of satisfaction.
I think that’s how many of us go through life. We put on the face we need to compete and succeed, yet secretly each one of us harbors doubts and fears. A few of us even confront personal loathing at times, thought we dare not show anyone. Fortunately, even that is changing as mental health rises to the forefront of public consideration.
Running for fifty years has confirmed what Sports Illustrated writer and author Kenny Moore once wrote, “Running is hard, clean, and severe.” That’s what I always liked about it. And I still do. And I’m no longer afraid.
