(First published as a community column in The Huntsville Times on August 10, 2008)My Olympic dream died sometime around 1978. The reality was that I could barely crack the top ten of an average high school cross country race, so there was little hope of me ever mounting the winner's platform and hearing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in my lifetime.
But I kept on running anyway. Just like Forrest Gump, I didn't have sense enough to know when to stop.
During the 1972 Munich Games, American runners like Jim Ryun, Steve Prefontaine, Dave Wottle and Frank Shorter captured my elementary schoolboy imagination and launched my own much less stellar running career.
Ryun, the world record-holder in the mile, was my hero. He'd finished second in the 1500 meter run to Kenya's Kip Keino in the thin, rare air of Mexico City four years prior and was a favorite in Munich. But someone tripped him during a qualifying heat, ending his gold medal dreams forever.
Harsh reality
To my young mind, it was an early tutorial in cold, harsh reality, a warning that nice guys can finish last no matter how fast they are. I knew what I had to do to right that great wrong: I set my sights on 1984 and started training right then and there.
I fashioned a makeshift running singlet by cutting off the sleeves of a white t-shirt and stenciling a crude "U.S.A." across the front in red and blue magic marker. Soon I was racing an imaginary Kip Keino around my house, and I eventually wore a bare path in my father's lawn, not as sacred and pristine as the track at the University of Oregon's legendary Hayward Field, but just as oval.
The farmers driving by in their pickup trucks laden with bales of hay looked on in bemusement, gave me the Southwest Virginia salute—chin lift, one finger raised off the steering wheel—and probably thought, Lawdy mercy, what's that Brown boy up to now?
My father never complained but simply smiled and asked, "How many laps did you run today?" Dad never came to any of my cross country meets. He was a postal worker, and neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor your child's extracurricular activities could stop the U.S. Mail back then.
But on the mornings after meets, he'd always check the sports section of The Roanoke Times to see where I'd finished. He'd tell me how proud he was to see my name in the paper like that, right there beside the NFL scores and college football rankings.
The Perfect Run didn't come until I was in college, though. In March, 1983, I ran in a charity fundraiser on the Harding University track. I wasn't intending to run that hard, but when I saw the lovely ladies of Sigma Phi Mu gathered in the stands to cheer us on, I knew this was as close as I would ever get to a piece of Olympic glory.
I dialed in a sub-six minute per mile pace and aimed to hold it for as far as my legs would carry me. They carried me ten miles in just under an hour that night.
Lingering effects
You've heard of the "runner's high?" It's been 25 years since I ran that far, that fast, but I still get stoned just thinking about it.
A few years ago, I finally got a chance to meet my boyhood hero when he spoke at Harding. By then, he was Congressman Jim Ryun, and I told him how he'd inspired me to start running, and that I still didn't have sense enough to know when to stop.
I also mentioned my duels with the invisible Kip Keino on the dusty oval that I blazed on my father's lawn, and he asked me who won.
"I did," I replied.
"Good for you," he laughed.
Then he held my gaze just a little bit longer, and I saw in his eyes a wistful mix of pain and pride and knew in an instant what he was thinking:
If we'd run that race at sea level back in '68, I would have won too.©2008 Dr. Michael Brown/20/40-Something. All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment