Starting

When people ask how long I've been running my answer is pretty much, well, forever. At least that's about how far away junior high seems now. The smell of corn nuts in the cafeteria and lunches of ice cream sandwiches fit right in alongside my first days of "organized" running. Of course, I had spent much of my youth playing organized sports like soccer (my first love) and T-ball (which I had no use for after I got my glory day on the pitcher's mound). So I had done lots of running before junior high. But junior high is where running became the sport-not the thing you do in practice. This is why I'm able to tell my seventh grade students, and feel confident in doing so, that the patterns they start now are ones they will hold for the rest of their lives. Not that I ever thought I'd be thirty-something and still running. Mostly I thought that at 30 I'd be old. Rotten kid.
But there I was, a seventh grader standing in his newly minted running shoes sitting in the stands by our junior high track listening to our coach (also a math teacher) explain what we would be doing. Running all the way around the track? More than once? Wearing those little singlets and even smaller shorts? Apparently my response was to hike up my socks as tall as possible-yes, the ones with the big stripes up at the top (if I can find the picture I'll post it later). Not only did I have the high-fashion socks going on, but my shoes must have been the most cushioned ones ever made, because the sole on those things must have been two inches thick. Don't ask where I got 'em...I don't think I or my parents knew that there were such things as running specialty stores. But at least I had running shoes. Some of my friends showed up in high tops, skateboard shoes, and goodness knows what else. By the third week most of them were sitting on the side icing their shins. He also explained that we would split up into smaller sub-sets: distance runners, sprinters, hurdlers, and the kids who threw heavy stuff. It didn't take long for me to calculate where I belonged. Hurdles were out of the question; the low ones came up to the middle of my chest and I had never been noted for jumping ability. That also knocked out long and high jump. This skinny little white kid wasn't going to be hanging air. My short legs kind of made sprinting...well...not so much sprinting. Of course, I did give it a try on coach's direction, but the tall socks were just too much. I had no speed. Nor was I going to throw anything any distance. As I mentioned, I gave up on throwing a baseball after 1 game pitching...my arms simply didn't have the meat. So....distance. Not so bad. At least I get to run slow. Right?
Our long run, for the distance runners, was this impossible trek down the sidewalk into the neighborhood next to our school. Miles and miles long. By which I mean it was about 2 miles. As seventh graders who knew very little of the sport of running, we whispered amongst ourselves about the eighth graders who could go the whole way. Without stopping. That was hard core. However, something clicked as we started to talk about this. If they could do it, why couldn't I? I wanted to be the one who could go, in our limited experience anyway, forever. Yes, two miles all at once. Grand goals, yes, but it started a habit. Now, having completed 5 marathons and countless other races, it seems odd to think that it all started on a lonely windswept track, socks hiked up, and a thought.

Just keep going