A few years ago my mother unearthed a box that contained my high school running spikes. Blue and gold Nikes that I picked out precisely because they were first place shoes. Blue ribbons, gold metals. They still had the sharp jags screwed in, the tips like a needle prick, a fresh batch for the final races—State competition. For six years, grades 7 through 12, I think I made it to that big time track meet every year. Almost always with the 4 x 400 relay team, and a few times for the 400 meter dash, which is one sprinting loop around the track. I wonder how slow I could mosey that loop in those spiked shoes now. If got down into the blocks, could I get up again before the girls reached the first turn?
This is not the same body I lived in 32 years ago. Somewhere along the way they gave me a different one. Slower, sorer, squishier, but smarter. Maybe. I’m like a hermit crab that outgrew its shell, got drunk on the beach, and woke up living inside a broken light bulb. I’m a broken light bulb now, still functional, just not in the way it started out.
I almost didn’t run track at all that year, a twist that confounded everyone who knew me at the time. Just before the season started I decided to go out for the golf team instead. Zero experience with golf. Arguably, zero interest in golf. Someone made it sound fun and easier than running until you nearly drop, and frankly, I was tired. I was so tired that last year of school all I wanted to do was sleep.
A few weeks ago I was at Lowes hardware and spotted this guy in his mid-60s somewhere between the potting soil and the paint swatches. He sorta shuffled along in his flip-flops, a five-day old grey beard, white long sleeved knit shirt that hit an inch above his belly button, and black suspenders that held his jeans right along the pelvic bone line. I thought to myself, If that’s what freedom looks like, I’m wearing it wrong. Maybe going out for the golf team was my high school crop top-suspenders moment.
After two weeks of bad swings and terrible form, I slunk into my coach’s geometry classroom with my head lowered. Would he take me back on the track team? I was sincerely concerned I’d tossed my chance, despite being one of his strongest runners and, obviously, so charming to have around. But really anyone who went out for the track team found a place on the track team, though still I was afraid my restless curiosity had been seen as a loyalty error and I’d be blocked. I couldn’t have been reaccepted with more warmth and encouragement.
So I was back in my groove, doing the thing I’d done the five previous Aprils, working on my sprintiginity, as coach called it. Pretty sure he made that word up to describe our sprinting abilities, and oh, how I miss losing mine.
Early in the season, I was off by myself stretching on a tarp in the sun. Shade was scant. The field events were winding down and soon the track races would start. We were a small 1A Florida school, private, almost entirely white, and we were competing against another 1A school from somewhere more rural and almost entirely Black. We’d competed against them before, probably every year, and this was my sixth and final season.
I was sitting, one leg outstretched, head down to the knee when a group of four or five girls from the other team walked up and stood above me.
“You run the hundred?” The girl leading the pack asked me.
“Yeah.” I said this confidently, but a little nervously, unsure of where the confrontation was headed.
“Um-hum,” she said and turned to the girls standing behind her.
“Ya’ll. That white girl fast.”
It was a proud moment. About 45 minutes later, I beat her, again, taking first place in the 100 meter dash once more.
A lot happened that year in track. At the first meet of the season I leaned too soon into the finish line and lost my balance, slid across the asphalt and scraped up a thigh, a palm, and a little bit of abdomen. It fucked me up for a while, couldn’t run on the track, had to do all my workouts in the grass, because I couldn’t stop seeing myself smashing against the pavement. But I kept showing up.
I keep thinking about this concept of running, that I tried running from running only to run back to running, where ultimately I excelled at running a loop. Maybe our first instincts are always right. I’ve been writing blogs and essays and stories, and content and copy for clients since 2008, with intermittent breaks to do something totally different. I’m always running from writing only to return to writing, trying to leave while consistently arriving. Like I’m going in through the out door. Have I even been anywhere at all? It’s a wide circumference I travel, and metaphysically, I’m still a really fast white girl on the track.
I like the loop metaphor.