"GO!" Speed. Running hard down the straightaway and avoiding the junior high football team, taking the turn, running into the 35-degree wind, turning again, and finishing at the timer. "Eighty-Two, Eighty-Three, Eighty-Four" cuts through the air. There's some snow flurries. "HEART RATES...READY, GO". Hands fly up to the lower neck to feel the bouncing bob of being bushed. After fifteen seconds, hands are released, and recovery occurs for a short amount of time. The realization that it's cold flies in stark contrast to the fact that these 400s aren't getting any easier. The legs are becoming lead bricks, the lungs are feeling fire, and breathing is getting louder by the rep. In the middle of the workout, the first few easy reps are done, and the last few are too far away to have any sort of hope. This hurts. I smile, look down at one of my watches, and send off our varsity boy on his next rep. I look over at our varsity girl and say, "You start in 10 seconds." Oh, how many times I've been on the receiving end of that. I shiver- it's cold when you're not running.
Let's back up five days. We were pulling into the Class B Region Cross Country Meet in Beulah, North Dakota. This park where the meet is at is located at the base of the Knife River Valley, a beautiful, meandering stream through the rough western North Dakota carved terrain. To the south, the highway rises up through the buttes, cutting straight south to the interstate, while north of town the towers of the coal mines protrude high in the open sky. As teams begin to arrive, many of them in small school buses with "_____ county public school" written on the side, athletes dance around to warm up. It snowed overnight in this first week of October, and a light layer of wet snow covers the course. The couple teams in the western half of the state with tents bring them, the rest wish for a tent or tarp. We arrive in a mini van carrying all of our athletes and coaches.
At the coaches meeting, I'm an outsider. The coaches are all familiar with each other and all the athletes, and coaches sit down together and discuss all sorts of topics unrelated to running. To my pleasant surprise, donuts are being offered; I take a bavarian cream donut before someone beats me to it. Life is a race, after all.
Athletes are beginning to warm-up now. This particular course is, as the kids would say, savage. The race begins and ends on the flat valley floor. The other 4600 meters of the 5000 meter race are much different. Within the first mile, the runners must go up two decent hills that would qualify it as a perfectly legitimate cross country course just on those merits. After the mile marker, the runners get a slight break from hills and then have a steep downhill straight into a monster. The best way to describe the hill would be to take a western ND butte, spend too money watering it for a false sense of hope, and then make people run up it. If the runner survives that hill, they are 'rewarded' with quarter-mile downhills and corresponding uphills for the next mile. Then, and ONLY then, are they allowed to come all the way back down to the valley floor to the finish. Nobody has a decent kick left at the end of this race.
Being at the meet, there's a few realities that are simply impossible for the outside observer to ignore. The first is the absolute dominance by the New Town men's team. Not only do they sweep the top 7 spots in the race, but they have 6 of those runners ranked in the top 7 in the state. It could be argued that they are the best Class B men's team in state history, if not one of the best overall. Most of their runners are so fluid in their forms that it's quite fun to watch. Their coach, Mr. Anderson, was rewarded with a Coach of the Year award that will likely be upgraded in two weeks at state. Throughout the history of cross country in this state, New Town has been a force to be reckoned with, and this was no exception.
The second reality was the strong Native presence at the meet. It has impressed me since I was in high school how well reservation families and communities come out to support their athletes. Native athletes took many of the top 10 places in both varsity races, and many of the fans were as well. Especially with the Standing Rock protests going on, in which the rhetoric has been stepped up a notch and people are letting their blatant racism shine through, it seems wonderful that a sport like cross country can bring people together in the same manner week after week during the fall.
Being at a meet such as this regularly allows me the opportunity to look at the bigger picture. In reality, nobody outside of North Dakota cares about this meet. In reality, this won't pop up on anybody's radar for any reason. In reality, the results of this meet will disappear into the file boxes of small schools, delegated to cabinets in locked rooms in a corner of the school where old trophies collect dust. This is a course where during the second mile of the race a runner can feel as if they are running along a country road with their teammates, with little distractions or noise. Out here, nobody is watching besides the few who came to watch you. Out here, people don't simply drop by to 'check it out'. Out here, cross country is harder.
And yet, it means something to so many people. I saw tears after bad races and I saw tears after good races. I saw coaches sprinting across the open fields, trying to catch their athletes at the next checkpoint just to holler something encouraging to them that the runner might not even be able to process at that moment. I almost feel bad for the kids that grow up in places like California, where many of their races are run on nice, manicured, flat courses in perfect weather- they miss out on all the life lessons. Pain isn't just running up a difficult hill- it's running up a difficult hill in the middle of nowhere when there may not be many other runners around you. The mental pain of working hard in the conditions these kids are given is something that never shows up in the results. The true grit that it takes simply to make it to the start line might not reflect in finishing times.
Standing there at the meet, it occurs to me how incredibly isolated we are from most of the country. To a majority of Americans, Bismarck is a quaint little town where St. Carson Wentz IV came from. However, to many of the people in attendance (myself included), Bismarck is that big city that might be visited every couple weeks, having such amenities as Walmart, chain restaurants, and shopping malls with more than cute knick-knacks and t-shirts supporting the local high school. From here, Bismarck is more than an hour away. Opportunity here is much different: outside of coal/gas/oil industry and farm/ranching jobs, there's not a lot for people here. Sure, most towns have some kind of school, and almost every county has a hospital of some kind, that isn't what economically drives the area. Here, driving two hours for a cross country meet is perfectly normal, and anything more than that isn't out of the ordinary. We put together the entire western half of the state's class B schools and struggle to get 80 kids to toe the line of the varsity boys race. The blue sky runs off in every direction as far as the eye can see, and no matter how fast or how far you run, the landscape doesn't change much, and yet here we are, running and fighting against the elements. Except, I don't think of it as fighting. When you live here, either the wind becomes your friend or you go insane. The cold teaches you lessons, whether you listen or not. You see life and death of seasons, animals, and people. The more you fighting the prairie, the more unforgiving it can become; the more you embrace, the more inviting it can seem. Some people in our life are the same way.
As I watch my runners finish up their last truly difficult workout of the season, I have time to reflect on my own running and how much I miss the struggle. With student teaching and training my body how to run barefoot, my training has been hampered quite a bit this semester, but I've learned so much from these kids. The most surprising thing to learn has been the immense amount of power I have over them. I have hard-working, dedicated runners who will do whatever workout I give them. I could have them do training that makes them feel like zombies during the day, trying to make it from practice to practice, and they would keep going because coach said so. But that's not the business I'm in. At every step in the road I've been worried more about long-term development than short-term results. Maybe that doesn't produce state champions now, but it produces long-term runners who love what they do and want to share it. So there I stand, a coach with a watch in his shivering hand, sharing what he loves with those who can learn. Throughout it all, I find a sense of peace. From whence it comes I know not, but life, after all, is a race. It doesn't matter as much who wins, but what it took you to get to the start line. Be wary- I can't promise that the race won't be without a few hills and some gusty winds, especially in western North Dakota.
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