I was hit. I rolled onto the ground, screaming in agony while the attacker raced past me in the hallway. I heard shouting across the room, and quickly regained my senses. I picked up my gun and peered around the corner. Instantly a bullet wizzed past my head, and I tucked back into my quarters. Knowing my options were limited, I stepped up on my bed and looked out over the top of the wall. I could see people running down the halls towards the other side of the building, and so I picked up my gun and aimed. As the people entered into the open area, I followed their lead and made a clean shot. I quickly ducked beneath the wall, right as a bullet flew past overhead. As the battle continued raging, I decided to step out of my defensive position and run through the halls. Nowhere was safe.
When we were done, we packed up our nerf guns into a large trash bag. One of the other kids, knowing we would have an open night at camp, had brought an entire bag of nerf guns so we could have a war with both sides of the dorm. I don't remember how many of us stayed the weekend, but it was an amazing experience. We were at the International Music Camp, a childhood love of mine, nestled deep within the Turtle Mountains, in a no-man's land between Canada and North Dakota called the "International Peace Gardens".
Throughout the summer, many different one-week camps are offered to high school students, and this particular year I chose to do two in a row. For me, this meant spending the one off-day in between weeks at the camp, with many of the international students there for multiple weeks. We played, we ate, and we got our sleep. I have wonderful memories of practicing and performing music, dorm life, meeting new people, taking part in the 'World's Greatest Drummer' competition, and playing absurd amounts of 4-square. I actually looked to work there after high school, but upon learning that you had to be 21 to be a counselor, I instead worked at Camp of the Cross, where I fell in love with North Dakota, running, the countryside, met my wife, got engaged, and got married.
Music has always been a big part of my life.
It started in middle school, when my band teacher Mrs. Morrison encouraged me to try out for all-state band in 7th grade. I made it, and every year after that until I graduated high school. The music I had the privilege to perform and the musicians I was fortunate to meet changed me into a new person over time. International Music Camp (IMC) opened my eyes to another world of music I didn't know existed. I even auditioned for a music scholarship at UND because I was interested in majoring in music in college.
Over the years, music and running have started to intertwine more and more. I don't necessarily remember when this happened, but at some point I started to occasionally listen to my iPod while running. To this day, I still do way more runs without music than ones where I do, but it has still taken some crappy days and made them a bit better. I discovered mixes, or long periods of music without ads or switching. First, it was hour-long mashup mixes from the White Panda, such as Pandamonium and Bearly Legal. Then, it was hour-long Panda Waves mixes from the same group. After that came 'Nice Hair with the Chainsmokers', featuring the Chainsmokers, a relatively new group that was making noise in the world of EDM. Mixes gave me big chunks of music to listen to while running, making the 50, 60, 70, 80, and even 90 mile weeks seem a little shorter.
As I've mentioned on here before, runners are increasingly turning to music as a means of helping to defeat the pain of running. You look at any local race, from 5k to marathon, and you will find many runners with arm sleeves holding their phone or music device. Airpods are becoming normal. Even in ultramarathoning and trail races, often held in beautiful and scenic locations, racers will often have music to assist. While I refuse to listen to music during workouts or long runs, easy can breeze by when you have music that gets you fired up.
Music is truly a universal language. I have recently joined a community orchestra in an attempt to rekindle the fire I had in high school, and the first night I attended we jumped right into music. Even though I was in Virginia (instead of North Dakota) and with a bunch of adults (instead of youth), so many things were the same. Forte means loud, piano means soft, rests are easier to count out loud or with fingers, and solos are scary. Across the world, every culture has some form of music; in fact, music is one of the few things that every group of people on Earth shares and has shared in common. Chinese music has a distinct sound, middle Eastern music has a distinct sound, and Native American music in the US has a distinct sound.
Music connects us. Music brings families together, drives people to tears, and encourages celebration. Music can be used to mourn the dead and praise the living. Music helps us to defeat silence when it encircles us. Music inspires. Many times I've let music lift me up and prepare me for big races.
It's been awhile since I've listened to music while running. Maybe it's time to dig out the old iPod and give it a whirl.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Loneliness
Every human will at some point find themselves lonely. Loneliness is a basic human emotion that stems from our want and need to be around other humans, especially ones like ourselves. Just about every member of animal kingdom displays some sort of herd mentality or group organization, and humans are no different. Yes, of course, there are people that wish to be left alone and live by themselves in the backwoods, but that doesn’t mean they never wish to see anybody.
Runners are perhaps more susceptible to loneliness than other subgroups of people. As an activity, running usually involves stressing the human body and mind at the same time, and for most adults, this also happens alone. Thousands of people across the US (and world) are up before the crack of dawn grinding out miles in the morning chill before work or sliding along the silent streets long after most sane people have retreated to bed. By itself it may not be so bad, but for many of these people (myself included), we have tasted the deliciousness of group running from things like track and cross country in our youth. Gone are the days of prescribed practice times during the nicest parts of the day, where groups of similar-minded people get together. Gone is the shared sweat and craziness of racing. Gone are the easy runs and conversations with friends.
We have come up with innovative ways to deal with these problems. Adult running clubs have formed in larger cities as a means of bringing people together, and an added bonus (sometimes) of lobbying for access to the local high school track, which is usually locked up to all the public whose taxes paid for it. Local businesses will put on 5k runs or weekly meetups where runners can share in their agony of training and joys of the resulting successes. We have sophisticated musical technology, especially now with Bluetooth, that allows us to shut off the world around us and listen to our favorite tunes, giving us that added jolt to our step when we feel tired. We have treadmills set up at gyms, fully equipped with air conditioning, tv, music, and even simulated trails.
And yet, we cannot push away the loneliness.
When intervals become hard, who’s gonna know that we added 4 seconds to the recovery time? During long tempos, who will notice that we cut one mile off the total? On long runs, what can occupy our mind’s space for more than an hour, when all we can think about is sweat and pain?
The loneliest I’ve ever been while running was in the summer of 2018, when I had been dropped during the second half of the Maah Daah Hey Trail Marathon, and I found myself unable to take more than a few jog steps before walking. I was weak, exhausted, in pain, and completely and totally alone. There was no friend to lift me up with words of encouragement. There were no alternate routes or places to drop out. I had no access to any sort of music device or nutritional aid (other than water). I could see no competitors in the distance in any direction. Giving up was not an option; I had to drag myself and my damaged pride across the finish line, a mere seven miles away. Somehow, I finished, and I became tougher from that experience.
Do we grow from experiencing extreme loneliness?
There’s an argument to be made that when we are alone, we get a glimpse of what our true selves may be. In our world of social media and unprecedented mobility, we rarely find ourselves alone. Are we what we put on social media? In most cases, no. Are we what people see from us? Possibly. Are we how we behave when no one is looking- when we are trapped inside our own mind, waiting patiently to see where it takes us next? Absolutely. I learned in college that character is how you behave when no one is looking- being alone.
I had a new encounter with loneliness recently. I had just finished moving to Virginia, and my mom had accompanied me while Ingrid finished working back in North Dakota. After a few days, she had to leave. I drove with her to the Richmond Airport, dropped her off, and drove home. I walked into the house and it was quiet. Nobody was there. My cats were still a few weeks away. I had a few boxes of my things and a house with a heavy deadness to it. I was blessed by my uncle-in-law with a radio and auxiliary cord, so I listened to music quite a bit, but even that couldn’t drown out the quietness around me. I took the opportunity to pour over things I had written in high school and college; over time I started to rediscover who I had been, and how he compared to the current me. There were areas that I saw marked improvement, and areas where I saw a de-emphasis of something that I value. Without this change and loneliness, I would not have had this chance for personal reflection and growth. It was hard, but I grew from it.
Loneliness is an essential part of the human experience. In the Bible, we have references to Moses going to the top of the mountain to speak with God; we have Jesus seeking refuge away from the people to go pray; we also have Paul all alone in prison, writing letters of hope and forgiveness to churches. We have stories of different groups of people throughout history who would send out adolescents into the wild for days in order to discover something about themselves or something the Gods needed them to see. In our world, we have wrestled with loneliness and used our ingenuity to render it almost impossible to find, but it is still there. We are afraid of it, but it is something we all need. I was lonely when I was sitting in an empty home, crying because I missed it, but I now realize that few things were better at preparing me for the steps ahead than the loneliness behind.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Balance
The streetlights glowed orange, shining small circles on the road, swallowed up in increments by the looming darkness of the night. The Virginia air was muggy and calm, with only the sounds of cars somewhere through the trees on a nearby highway. A few stars glittered in the sky, overpowered by the abundance of light. I stood, soaked and panting, after finishing an evening easy run. I began doing some short sprints back and forth on the road, noticing some discomfort in my right knee. I turn my head to the sky and catapult back......
With my arm raised to the sky- trying and failing to acquire GPS satellites- I felt the gravel underneath my feet. It was a cool September morning, with the temperature dipping into the low 40s and the morning glow beginning to overpower the deep darkness in the east. I hear the beep telling me my watch is ready, take a few ginger strides on the gravel, and hop onto the grass. I work my way up the hill and into the prairie trails. Each step lands softly on cool, damp grass, while each push scatters formerly mown grass into the air. As the light continues to pore over the horizon, I run near the lake and soak in the morning breeze. Waves ripple orange, and there are no sounds except the early birds. I complete my 30 minute loop and finish back at the gravel. I wipe off my feet and step inside; now it was time to get ready for school.....
Running in Virginia has presented new challenges, for example finding quality places to run. Where we live, there aren't many running paths, sidewalks, trails, or even road-shoulders to run on- we make due with what we have. Ingrid and I have even went to the local middle school to run on their magnificently manicured field hockey field, just to find something new. One night we were running around town, and at one point we ran through a particularly dark space, where no streetlights could reach. I looked down and saw only faint outlines of my legs, and I wondered what it would be like to lay down on the road right there- how long until someone drove up on me? Of course, I didn't do something ridiculous like that, but it did get my mind travelling back a time when maybe I did....
It was another late night White Shield run. There were still a few cars driving on the main highway through town, but all was fairly quiet, and the milky way shone brilliantly above my head in my driveway. I turned on my headlamp, so I could be easily identified, and started down the road. Soon thereafter I was outside of town on the main highway. The silence was deafening and the stars were begging for my attention. For as many miles as I could see and hear in every direction, there were no cars- only black darkness. I slowed to a stop and exhaled. The steam from my breath rose up immediately into my light and temporarily blinded me. On this cold winter night, I shut off my headlamp and let my eyes adjust to the dark; instantly the heavens above opened up and trillions of twinkling lights flashed around me like a disco ball. I was mesmerized. I sat down on the cold, frozen asphalt and contemplated the vastness of it all. As I looked around, still seeing no one, I lay down on my back and began to stargaze, right there in the middle of the highway. The milky way right above my head....
I snap back to my Virginia run. Finding identity has been another struggle here. For so many years I defined myself as that person who unconditionally loved North Dakota and took joy from all of it's many 'drawbacks'. I learned and taught life lessons, and always tried to be positive when things looked grim. Many people were surprised that I would move. If I went to a race in North Dakota, I would know many people there, especially those people in the top packs. Over time it became who I was.
Here in Virginia, people don't know me. I don't stand out more than anyone else, and there are tons and tons of people who not only know more about this area, but also have such a love for it that I don't yet understand. People love the beach, the Appalachians, and the supposed 'country' feel here. In all of this rests an identity crisis: who actually am I? It's something I'm working on, but the hardest part immediately is trying to have an open mind. Students, coworkers, and even my wife have all commented that I seem to be hanging on to this concept of North Dakota. Some of my geometry students recently asked me, "Is there anything here that you think is better than North Dakota?" I jokingly replied, "Nope", but when I think critically, I haven't really allowed that option to be on the table.
So how does a person keep hold of all of their cherished memories without holding them back from progress in the present? Well, if I knew that answer I wouldn't be typing this in my "North Dakota Runner" blog right now. This is all new to me, and something I never thought I'd experience. However, so far I've been able to go to the ocean, visit Yorktown, Williamsburg, teach in a new school, walk to a restaurant from home, order pizza delivered to home, and read up on new histories. This learning process is necessary, and I am thankful and blessed every day to have this opportunity and to share it with Ingrid.
So I guess I can try to find that balance between new home and old home. New memories and old memories. Still though, with the advent of fall comes old memories as well....
I woke up needing to pee really badly. I contemplated my options: I was sitting in a sleeping bag in a tent, next to my wife (also in a sleeping bag). It was cool (low 40s/upper 30s), and I had no bottle or anything to use. I would have to step out of the warmth, open the tent, and somehow hope to get back to sleep after all of the cold sucking into my whole body was finished with me. I collected myself and got up and out. As I stood to relieve myself, my eyes were attracted to something funky in the sky. I looked up and waited to see if whatever it was would come back, or if it was all in my head. As my eyes focused in, there seemed to weird, green, faint streaks of light moving through the sky. As I stood there, exposed, I suddenly realized that, for the first time, I was staring at the northern lights. I quickly finished and went into the tent to wake up Ingrid. She was not pleased, and only came out at the prospect of seeing the Aurora. At first, we couldn't see it, and I was terrified that this would be the last time she ever trusted me again (we were still only dating), but sure enough, green streaks starting darting through the sky again. It was beautiful, and we stood there, just the two of us, in an empty campground in the turtle mountains, in the middle of fall. And it was beautiful.
...
With my arm raised to the sky- trying and failing to acquire GPS satellites- I felt the gravel underneath my feet. It was a cool September morning, with the temperature dipping into the low 40s and the morning glow beginning to overpower the deep darkness in the east. I hear the beep telling me my watch is ready, take a few ginger strides on the gravel, and hop onto the grass. I work my way up the hill and into the prairie trails. Each step lands softly on cool, damp grass, while each push scatters formerly mown grass into the air. As the light continues to pore over the horizon, I run near the lake and soak in the morning breeze. Waves ripple orange, and there are no sounds except the early birds. I complete my 30 minute loop and finish back at the gravel. I wipe off my feet and step inside; now it was time to get ready for school.....
Running in Virginia has presented new challenges, for example finding quality places to run. Where we live, there aren't many running paths, sidewalks, trails, or even road-shoulders to run on- we make due with what we have. Ingrid and I have even went to the local middle school to run on their magnificently manicured field hockey field, just to find something new. One night we were running around town, and at one point we ran through a particularly dark space, where no streetlights could reach. I looked down and saw only faint outlines of my legs, and I wondered what it would be like to lay down on the road right there- how long until someone drove up on me? Of course, I didn't do something ridiculous like that, but it did get my mind travelling back a time when maybe I did....
It was another late night White Shield run. There were still a few cars driving on the main highway through town, but all was fairly quiet, and the milky way shone brilliantly above my head in my driveway. I turned on my headlamp, so I could be easily identified, and started down the road. Soon thereafter I was outside of town on the main highway. The silence was deafening and the stars were begging for my attention. For as many miles as I could see and hear in every direction, there were no cars- only black darkness. I slowed to a stop and exhaled. The steam from my breath rose up immediately into my light and temporarily blinded me. On this cold winter night, I shut off my headlamp and let my eyes adjust to the dark; instantly the heavens above opened up and trillions of twinkling lights flashed around me like a disco ball. I was mesmerized. I sat down on the cold, frozen asphalt and contemplated the vastness of it all. As I looked around, still seeing no one, I lay down on my back and began to stargaze, right there in the middle of the highway. The milky way right above my head....
I snap back to my Virginia run. Finding identity has been another struggle here. For so many years I defined myself as that person who unconditionally loved North Dakota and took joy from all of it's many 'drawbacks'. I learned and taught life lessons, and always tried to be positive when things looked grim. Many people were surprised that I would move. If I went to a race in North Dakota, I would know many people there, especially those people in the top packs. Over time it became who I was.
Here in Virginia, people don't know me. I don't stand out more than anyone else, and there are tons and tons of people who not only know more about this area, but also have such a love for it that I don't yet understand. People love the beach, the Appalachians, and the supposed 'country' feel here. In all of this rests an identity crisis: who actually am I? It's something I'm working on, but the hardest part immediately is trying to have an open mind. Students, coworkers, and even my wife have all commented that I seem to be hanging on to this concept of North Dakota. Some of my geometry students recently asked me, "Is there anything here that you think is better than North Dakota?" I jokingly replied, "Nope", but when I think critically, I haven't really allowed that option to be on the table.
So how does a person keep hold of all of their cherished memories without holding them back from progress in the present? Well, if I knew that answer I wouldn't be typing this in my "North Dakota Runner" blog right now. This is all new to me, and something I never thought I'd experience. However, so far I've been able to go to the ocean, visit Yorktown, Williamsburg, teach in a new school, walk to a restaurant from home, order pizza delivered to home, and read up on new histories. This learning process is necessary, and I am thankful and blessed every day to have this opportunity and to share it with Ingrid.
So I guess I can try to find that balance between new home and old home. New memories and old memories. Still though, with the advent of fall comes old memories as well....
I woke up needing to pee really badly. I contemplated my options: I was sitting in a sleeping bag in a tent, next to my wife (also in a sleeping bag). It was cool (low 40s/upper 30s), and I had no bottle or anything to use. I would have to step out of the warmth, open the tent, and somehow hope to get back to sleep after all of the cold sucking into my whole body was finished with me. I collected myself and got up and out. As I stood to relieve myself, my eyes were attracted to something funky in the sky. I looked up and waited to see if whatever it was would come back, or if it was all in my head. As my eyes focused in, there seemed to weird, green, faint streaks of light moving through the sky. As I stood there, exposed, I suddenly realized that, for the first time, I was staring at the northern lights. I quickly finished and went into the tent to wake up Ingrid. She was not pleased, and only came out at the prospect of seeing the Aurora. At first, we couldn't see it, and I was terrified that this would be the last time she ever trusted me again (we were still only dating), but sure enough, green streaks starting darting through the sky again. It was beautiful, and we stood there, just the two of us, in an empty campground in the turtle mountains, in the middle of fall. And it was beautiful.
...
Friday, August 23, 2019
Adjustment
The house is quiet. I walk through the silent halls past boxes full of things that are not mine. Pictures, collections, records, books, household items- rooms full and still. The first hint of morning light is straining through the large windows, arriving only after fighting for space among the large trees and leaves of the forest. I slide into my running clothes and shoes and step outside. The air inside is climate-controlled at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, but when I leave, it’s warmer and much more humid. Similar to the house, all is still. The hum of morning insects and morning commuters in the distance fills the soggy air. I start running down the street.
My first stretch of pavement is gradually uphill through the subdivision hugging Lewis Avenue, off Main Street. I then take a right and slide past local businesses- a diner, the local fire department, local attorneys, and a roundabout with the old county courthouse standing tall directly in the center. I wave at a fellow morning running and take another right at the local elementary school. The sidewalk disappears and I’m on a tiny, winding, shoulder-less road headed for the local park with trails. My shirt has been swept off my body, my sweat is starting to thicken- and I’m only one mile into the run.
Even at this time of day, traffic is heavy. Vehicle after vehicle drives in the opposite direction of me, headed for jobs to feed their family. Vehicle after vehicle drives past me in the same direction, most driven by high schoolers or parents of high schoolers, headed to the park for morning cross country practice. Somewhere in the distance, the sun has cracked the horizon, but underneath the impressive canopy, light is still a rare commodity.
I daydream while I run. This morning, like most mornings, my mind drifts away to the badlands of western North Dakota. A zig-zagging little single-track trail carves into a hillside and disappears over a ridge. I’m running effortlessly along it, underneath the warm summer sun. The dry breeze glides over me and wipes away my puny beads of sweat forming on my forehead. I recall every creek crossing, hill, and refreshing-but-seldom shade. The smell of juniper hangs heavy over the valleys, and a western meadowlark sings its song on a nearby fenceline. There are no people.
On my run today, my sweat is starting to overtake what little dry areas I have remaining. My skin is like a salamander in the mud, and after running through two short but steep valleys, my legs and breathing labor slightly. I enter the park and head for the trails. I run past the Mathews County high school cross team, warming up and preparing for practice, staring at me as if they’ve never seen another runner on these trails. I haven’t even seen another runner here either, so it’s likely a warranted response. I run through a few impressively large spider webs and coat my glistening skin with freshly woven silk. After a short time, my watch hits 30 minutes, and it’s time to head back- to leave.
It’s hard to leave a place. My first few days in Virginia, I had difficulty with being away from my ‘homeland’ and family. However, with a positive attitude and a desire to interact with people, things started to brighten up. Through school and church I met kind, welcoming people, and was immediately accepted into tight circles. The overwhelming fear I had slowly dissipated and was replaced with a timid curiosity. I felt like a cat, who when they are introduced to a new place, may hide in one spot for quite a while, before slowly wandering around in fascinated fear. It took me more than a week before I finally left the town I was living in, but it was for a race- I needed to check out the local running scene.
As I continued down the morning road, parents were still brining their youth to practice, and other parents were driving back to town after dropping off their youth. Commuters were still appearing from their little developments, looking at me my soaked body with disinterested glances. In the quiet moments in between cars, I let my mind wander again; this time it did not rest in North Dakota. I was thinking about local upcoming races and racers I now wanted to beat. What would it take to rise to the top around here? Where are the good races? Where can a guy find some good cross country around here? It had felt good to go to a race where I knew exactly no one. Racing in North Dakota always brought some sort of expectation, because there was always someone who knew me and what I was capable of, but here I was another sweaty body at the start line. There’s still a part of me that wishes to be back in the open grasslands, but I’ve been able to focus more steadily on the world around me every day.
As I came into town, my mind aflush with new ideas and my body aflush with perspiration, I started thinking about the day- upon returning home I had one hour to do strides, shower, change, eat, pack, and drive 10 minutes to school. I looked down at my right leg and noticed a stream of white foam coming out of my black running shorts and down the side of my leg. I guess now I can say there has been two times in my life I’ve activated excess laundry detergent in my shorts from sweat. I run past the local diner and see some old men chatting over coffee and wondered what old men at the local diner discuss here in southeastern Virginia. I turn back and head downhill to the house, the one that used to belong to Ingrid’s grandmother. She still has many things in there, and it is quiet. I haven’t seen Ingrid in 13 days, but on this morning, she’s leaving from Minnesota with a trailer full our stuff, a pickup with two confused and terrified cats, and her two parents that have graciously given us their time to assist in the move. I finish my run and start walking. My shirt is heavy from wiped-off sweat, and my shoes make little squishy sounds from the water that had nowhere to go once my socks became waterlogged.
Everything is different here, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Life can be just as good or better here as compared to North Dakota- trust me, I’ve been repeating that to myself for almost two weeks now. Time to get ready for school, my trusty break from the quiet loneliness of the house.
Once I head outside, ready for school, I walk up to the pickup. I look at the bug-covered ND license plates, the dirt-covered sides, and the hand-written messages on the tailgates- all etched out in the gravel dust that you can’t find among all the paved roads here. I smile. I will be ok here.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Goin Out To Eat
In 2016, the Boston College Men's basketball team finished off their season, albeit not a very good one. After the last game, it was time to do interviews. Senior Dennis Clifford had just played his final game with the team, and he was asked what he would take away as his best memory at BC. Clifford paused, stuttered out "Probably, just like..." and tapered off. He put his head down and was motionless and silent for quite awhile. When he finally brought his head back up, his face was flushed and tears welled up around his eyes. He managed to choke out "going out to eat" before putting his head back down.
In the time following, many people made jokes out of what he had said; how can a person reduce a successful, D1 basketball career to food? In reality, it's likely that he was processing everything outside of basketball. It's easy to think of athletes only in terms of what they do in competition, or even in practice, but this ignores much of the story. A true team stays a team in all areas- competition and practice yes- but also travel, meals, class, locker room, and even the dorms or houses they share. It's likely that this man shared so many fun experiences with his teammates while eating out that he was affected most by realizing that was gone. Myself, I miss the long hours of playing foosball with my teammates in the locker room. The main idea here is that it's easy to get wrapped up in the big things, but the small things we miss a lot more.
I'm in Virginia now. This was a major change in all aspects in my life, especially the weather with it's incredible humidity right now. While I dwell in this new place, I have many times found myself wishing for or missing the little things. In terms of running, I never realized how much I took for granted wide enough roads to run on, and I definitely did not spend enough time being grateful for our chill and tame spiders back home. After a week of finding places to run in a world of skinny, winding, shoulder-less roads, I've learned that parks with trails are the best bet. After a week of covering the upper half of my body with spider webs every day while trail running, I've learned to keep my head down.
In the rest of day, I miss seeing the sky and the clouds, because the incredible size of the trees here makes that difficult; I miss gravel roads and the open countryside; and I even at times have found myself missing the blowing snow that we likely will never get here.
Leaving camp was particularly hard. With nine summers at Camp of the Cross Ministries under my belt, I find myself hard-pressed to find a summer I more thoroughly enjoyed than this one, be it the advent of lawn chairs in the front of the wellness center, where I could stop and enjoy a peaceful evening exhale, the large number of supercampers that chose to be on staff this year, the lack of shoes on my feet most of the time, or the dad-jokes that spread through camp like an infectious disease.
The little thing that affected me the most was the family atmosphere of the camp. During the first two weeks of summer, the staff spends time together in cabins during staff training, boys in one cabin, and girls in another one or two cabins across the courtyard. It's hard to understate the bonding time that comes from living in close quarters with others for an extended period of time (in fact, this summer the non-counselors had to do that all summer!) I have always looked back and missed those times of learning and fellowship. Also those first few summers for me, I would spend my weekends holed up in Prairie Rose cabin, all alone and learning about silence and peace from the countryside. I miss waking up in the middle of the night to shut the windows while thunder rumbled nearby.
Before I left this year, I took a walk, one which brought me through Prairie Rose. It was a double whammy for me, because this also functioned as the space for male staff this summer. As I stood by the back door, I looked around: dirty clothes covering the floor like carpet, unkept sleeping bags strewn across wooden bed frames, a working air conditioner uncomfortably hanging out the window, a musty boy smell wafting around. I simultaneously thought about my peace in Prairie Rose and the time of fellowship in the cabins during staff training, and slid to the ground and cried. I cried hard. They were very minor things to most people- a quiet cabin on a few weekends, and a couple weeks of time with friends, but for me it was some of my most favorite camp memories. I wept. I miss those days.
I was allowed to make my peace and say a proper goodbye. I travelled almost 1800 miles to a new homeland, full of abundant life in ways I've never experienced. My new teacher orientation has started and is a full two days in now, with two more to go. I haven't met too many new people yet, but I sure hope to. But I know that I have the ability to thrive here- North Dakota taught me that.
After our morning session today, our assistant superintendent gave us a 1 hour, 30 minute lunch break, asking us if we were ok with that. Hearing literally no objections, we picked up our things. I had resigned to go to the seemingly always-packed Chick-Fil-A by myself to use my gift card, but some teachers my age were starting to discuss going out to eat at the new Mexican restaurant in town, a very tasty one I had the pleasure of going to with family the previous week. They turned to me and asked if I wanted to go out to eat with them. I smiled- of course I would.
In the time following, many people made jokes out of what he had said; how can a person reduce a successful, D1 basketball career to food? In reality, it's likely that he was processing everything outside of basketball. It's easy to think of athletes only in terms of what they do in competition, or even in practice, but this ignores much of the story. A true team stays a team in all areas- competition and practice yes- but also travel, meals, class, locker room, and even the dorms or houses they share. It's likely that this man shared so many fun experiences with his teammates while eating out that he was affected most by realizing that was gone. Myself, I miss the long hours of playing foosball with my teammates in the locker room. The main idea here is that it's easy to get wrapped up in the big things, but the small things we miss a lot more.
I'm in Virginia now. This was a major change in all aspects in my life, especially the weather with it's incredible humidity right now. While I dwell in this new place, I have many times found myself wishing for or missing the little things. In terms of running, I never realized how much I took for granted wide enough roads to run on, and I definitely did not spend enough time being grateful for our chill and tame spiders back home. After a week of finding places to run in a world of skinny, winding, shoulder-less roads, I've learned that parks with trails are the best bet. After a week of covering the upper half of my body with spider webs every day while trail running, I've learned to keep my head down.
In the rest of day, I miss seeing the sky and the clouds, because the incredible size of the trees here makes that difficult; I miss gravel roads and the open countryside; and I even at times have found myself missing the blowing snow that we likely will never get here.
Leaving camp was particularly hard. With nine summers at Camp of the Cross Ministries under my belt, I find myself hard-pressed to find a summer I more thoroughly enjoyed than this one, be it the advent of lawn chairs in the front of the wellness center, where I could stop and enjoy a peaceful evening exhale, the large number of supercampers that chose to be on staff this year, the lack of shoes on my feet most of the time, or the dad-jokes that spread through camp like an infectious disease.
The little thing that affected me the most was the family atmosphere of the camp. During the first two weeks of summer, the staff spends time together in cabins during staff training, boys in one cabin, and girls in another one or two cabins across the courtyard. It's hard to understate the bonding time that comes from living in close quarters with others for an extended period of time (in fact, this summer the non-counselors had to do that all summer!) I have always looked back and missed those times of learning and fellowship. Also those first few summers for me, I would spend my weekends holed up in Prairie Rose cabin, all alone and learning about silence and peace from the countryside. I miss waking up in the middle of the night to shut the windows while thunder rumbled nearby.
Before I left this year, I took a walk, one which brought me through Prairie Rose. It was a double whammy for me, because this also functioned as the space for male staff this summer. As I stood by the back door, I looked around: dirty clothes covering the floor like carpet, unkept sleeping bags strewn across wooden bed frames, a working air conditioner uncomfortably hanging out the window, a musty boy smell wafting around. I simultaneously thought about my peace in Prairie Rose and the time of fellowship in the cabins during staff training, and slid to the ground and cried. I cried hard. They were very minor things to most people- a quiet cabin on a few weekends, and a couple weeks of time with friends, but for me it was some of my most favorite camp memories. I wept. I miss those days.
I was allowed to make my peace and say a proper goodbye. I travelled almost 1800 miles to a new homeland, full of abundant life in ways I've never experienced. My new teacher orientation has started and is a full two days in now, with two more to go. I haven't met too many new people yet, but I sure hope to. But I know that I have the ability to thrive here- North Dakota taught me that.
After our morning session today, our assistant superintendent gave us a 1 hour, 30 minute lunch break, asking us if we were ok with that. Hearing literally no objections, we picked up our things. I had resigned to go to the seemingly always-packed Chick-Fil-A by myself to use my gift card, but some teachers my age were starting to discuss going out to eat at the new Mexican restaurant in town, a very tasty one I had the pleasure of going to with family the previous week. They turned to me and asked if I wanted to go out to eat with them. I smiled- of course I would.
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Saying Good Bye
Dazed and confused, I quickly shut off my alarm and confirm that I haven't woken up my wife. I slip out of bed, grandpa-walk to bathroom, relieve myself, quickly pound some water, throw on my running clothes and shoes, collect GPS signals on my watch, and start off down the road. It's a little before 6:30am, and the temperature is hanging around the upper 50s, with a rapidly rising sun about to change that. The camp is calm and quiet. A few miles to the east is the dreary sound of the engine powering an irrigation system for a local corn field by the lake. It will only get louder as I get closer. A few deer stare at me from the camp entrance before dashing into the trees; one that follows behind still has spots on it, but has definitely grown quite a bit in the last few months. I run past the mailboxes and out into the open prairie, following the gravel road up and out of the Missouri River valley.
This is a ritual I've completed over and over again in the past nine years. Indeed, it's where my love for running truly began- right here under the warm North Dakota sun on a washboardy gravel road. Since the summer of 2011, I've ran on this particular road more than 500 times (possibly over 700, I didn't keep good track of runs back then), and always had to go out-and-back as is required. Back in 2011 I had just finished high school and needed to boost my mileage modestly over the summer in order to be ready for college cross country. For me, this meant that I needed to run every day when I had a chance. Working as a Bible camp counselor was grueling in and of itself, but this meant that every day I would get a 90-minute break, usually from 3:30-5:00pm. This time was often during the warmest part of the day with temperatures routinely in the 80s with no clouds, minimal wind, and full sunshine uninhibited by any sort of shade on the North Dakota prairie. This, coupled with the exhaustion of being personally responsible for a small group of tiny humans the other 22.5 hours of the day, led to even the shortest runs taxing my body. While other staff members would take naps, play video games, or shower, I was out on the gravel roads, grinding up a hill and trying not to stop. Yes, there were times that I did have to stop, but those eventually became less and less. I would usually fall asleep during end-of-week staff meetings.
I believe that this experience helped me to develop a mental toughness that paid off in college, and allowed me to greatly increase my training when I started spending more time off my feet when classes started in the fall. But what changed me the most was the new world that opened up around me. Some staff members would want to run away from camp at the end of the week because they were never able to get out, but I was off-site every day seeing the open grasslands. For a kid who grew up in the Red River Valley, this landscape of long, rolling hills, swaying grass, bulls and cows watching you from the other side of the fence, fresh wildflowers in June and July, and the humming sounds of the cicadas and crickets were an explosion of new senses. Ironically enough, the stops on the runs that made me feel weak, also caused me to recognize the intense silence hanging heavy over my head. There I would stand, in the middle of a gravel road, beads of sweat rolling down my dusty body, breathing slowly relaxing, and I would hear no sound developed by humans. The noises filling my ears were likely the same noises that I would've heard in that exact same spot 500 years ago. In these stops, I fell in love with the sights and sounds of the prairie. Now, years later as a much more developed runner, I find myself stopping without physical reason at times simply to listen to the quiet.
Those were my first two summers at Camp of the Cross. Coming back to Grand Forks for college, I'd find myself struggling to get used to running on pavement and cement, because I'd normally go 3-4 weeks at a time without running on either of those surfaces. I'd also find myself searching for every gravel backroad or any way to get out of town to do my run- I needed to feel free and alive, just like in the prairies of western North Dakota.
It came to my attention that during my third summer at Camp, I'd be joined by another college runner, one from Concordia in Moorhead, MN. Her name was Ingrid. Truth be told, it ended up being a lot of fun finally having someone to run with at camp and share the road with. It wasn't every day, because she was a counselor and I was maintenance coordinator, but we did. We laughed, pushed each other, and heard all kinds of boring North Dakota facts from me. We found a spot together that we called "the spot", and that place became special to us over the years, even to the point where I proposed to her there years later.
That's a fun story, by the way. It was spring of 2016. I had a track meet at NDSU on Saturday, and Sunday morning I got up around 5am and drove four hours west to Camp. Ingrid was working there as a year-round full-time program manager, and I was wrapping up my fifth year of college. The whole drive I kept peeking over at the passenger seat at the small white box sitting there, still not completely sure how I was going to do it, but it was happening either way. I had a 90 minute run scheduled that day, a typical long run after a race kind of thing. I hid the ring in a corner of the entryway that Ingrid didn't normally go through. My plan was this: I would say good-bye to Ingrid, go the entryway to get my GPS watch ready, grab the ring, and run out the door to go hide it at "the spot". I would run 60 minutes on my own, hiding the ring in the process, and then together Ingrid and I would run 30 minutes to where I hid the ring. Great plan, right?
It was about 40 degrees, cloudy, and pretty windy. I went out to the entryway to collect the ring, but Ingrid followed me! She was going to do laundry and wanted to walk out with me! Of course, I had no hope of getting the ring at this point. I was short and angry with her, and as I left, she said "love you!" and I literally growled back "love you". She was very confused, not realizing how she was sabotaging our engagement. I ran down the gravel road, looking behind me and watching Ingrid bring her laundry across the parking lot to the laundry room. As soon as she walked in, I turned around, sprinted with all my life back to the entryway, grabbed the ring, and sprinted back out and around the back of the building, just before she came out of the laundry room. It worked!
First crisis averted. I ran my 60 minutes on the gravel, trying and failing to slow down my pace because my mind was rushing and I felt great. During the run I turned down a rutted section line leading to "the spot". When I got there, I found no decent place to hide the ring other than the inside lining of an old tractor tire. So I placed the expensive ring and dirt-free white case inside an old tractor tire in a section line in the middle of nowhere on a cold, blustery day, and then ran away from it back to the camp. I grabbed Ingrid and we started running.
Her back was in pain. And this wasn't, 'oh my back is sore, can we slow down?' pain, but 'I don't know if I'm gonna make it there' pain. I pictured where the ring was and tried to get Ingrid to keep going. I even offered at one point to drive her there, and she was confused as to why it was so important to me. We wound up doing a lot of walking and getting cold, but we eventually made it there. While sitting there, and about the time Ingrid stated that she was ready to head back because of the cold, I announced that I needed to go pee in the grass. I quickly ran to the tire, pulled out the ring, ran back, got on one knee, and the rest is history. The run back to camp on the gravel road was one of the most enjoyable times I've ever had with Ingrid.
This gravel road means a lot to me. Heat exhaustion and frostbite have both visited me while running on this road, and many times I've sweated through my entire set of clothing on long runs. One time I finished a long run and noticed a white, foaming line coming down my shorts to my shoes. Turns out that I used too much laundry detergent, and I had sweated so much I actually activated the suds and sent detergent spewing down my leg. I've rung sweat out of shirts, shorts, socks, hats, and jackets while on this road. I've started runs at 5:00am and 11:00pm, and just about every time in between. I can tell you the location of every single bump, crevasse, hill, washboard section, cow pasture, tree, and house along the road. I've had farm dogs surround me, porcupines run away from me, vultures circle above me, and cows stare at me. I've been driven past by thousands of vehicles, from huge semis that slow down and pull to the side, to Bismarck and Minot moms that zoom past in their $75,000 suburbans at 55mph, throwing rocks and dust into my face. Some people wave, some don't. Some slow down, some don't. Some move over, some don't. Most of them I personally know. I've run under the milky way, full moons, thunderstorms, and even the northern lights. I've been barraged by the wind from every direction, and a few times heard claps of thunder right overhead as I'm on a vast, treeless prairie road.
I learned how to run on this gravel road. My first couple summers I had only a $10 Walmart stopwatch to use. However, in the North Dakota countryside, every intersection is exactly 1 mile apart. I would check my watch every intersection and subtract to determine mile pace. I used this to figure out where at camp to start in order to hit 1 mile exactly at the first intersection (buffalo grass cabin). And, when I did get a GPS watch, it turned out I was dead-on. I ran my first tempos on this road. I ran my first true long run on this road. And, I ran hills for the first time on this road (sorry Red River Valley, overpasses don't count).
Most people, when coming to camp, see the 5.5 miles of gravel from the highway turn as something to travel across quickly on the way to the final destination; or, conversely, as a burden to how long it takes to get to nearby Garrison, ND from camp. I see it as something sacred. In the early morning hours of a summers day, or the late hours of a cold winters night, the road is still there. The landscape doesn't change. Each year lake water levels go up and down, new staff and campers come in and out, and the seasons go about their treacherous journey. And yet, despite all of that, I still throw on my shoes and head out the door- for nine years.
And so I find myself reflecting during my runs these last few weeks- will I run on this road again? Hopefully. But I make sure to hold my breathing sometimes while running so I can hear the quiet. I listen to the scrunching noise of my shoes pushing against the gravel. I stop at the entrance mailboxes, where I dump my shirt on my way out because I'm off of camp property, and gaze across the bluffs of the Missouri River Valley, cutting straight into the manmade Lake Sakakawea. I find myself looking back on my favorite memories, from the early morning long runs, to the bug-dodging evening runs, to the snowy winter runs. One stands out above the rest. It was 5 or 6 summers ago, I'm not quite sure. We just endured a strong afternoon thunderstorm and it had just finished clearing. While the campers were all inside having supper and making noise, I tore off for a quick run. 2 miles from the camp, I found myself needing to stop because the quiet around me was so intense that I could ignore it no longer. I paused and listened. There was a slight cool breeze from the northwest, gently rustling together the leaves of the corn in the field next to me. The air had an unspeakable clarity to it- one that only results from rain knocking all impurities out of the air. I could see the bluffs on the other side of the lake, probably 8 or 10 miles away, like they were right next to me. There were no other sounds. There was only prairie and silence. I stood and soaked it in briefly, and then turned around to head back to camp. The rest of my run was peaceful, as it always is when I take a moment to breathe and listen to the sounds of life.
Breathe and listen- it's something this gravel road has taught me.
Good bye, old friend.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Bugs
I had something unique happen the other day while doing some strides after my run- I was completely sidelined and defeated, forced to abandon what I was doing and finish early. Living in North Dakota, it would be easy to expect my reasoning to involve extreme cold, extreme wind, extreme heat/sunlight, extreme hail, or anything else extreme. However, this time it was bugs.
With the advent of sufficient moisture this year, we have seen an explosion of bugs recently. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean mosquitos (which there are plenty of, to be sure) but bugs of all kinds. Last week I was returning home from a trip to the Rockies and was amazed at the number of yellow butterflies in the great plains of South Dakota. It seemed as if in the span of four days they had all bred. I hoped that when I got home we would have something similar. Sure enough, back here in western NoDak we've had monarch butterflies paying us a visit. Just last night they were EVERYWHERE and it was almost impossible to avoid hitting them while driving.
There is still much more than butterflies and mosquitos, though. We also have these annoying nats that simply hover in tight circles and export a loud buzzing sound that eats up the prairie. Throughout the heat of the day they are largely absent, leaving us with only the sound of the breeze and the cicadas, but once the sun and wind start to descend in the west, the nats come out in full force. I realized this fully and completely the other day when I started my run about an hour before sunset, or around 8:30 pm.
By this point the bugs were hanging thick in the sky, but as I discovered quickly, only above the plants growing alongside the road. As I do most days, I stayed in the middle of the dusty gravel road while running, moving aside only to yield to random vehicles. When a vehicle would pass me, I would dutifully move over, only to receive an onslaught of bugs in my eyes, nose, mouth, and on my chest. As the run continued, I began to accumulate black dots all over my chest and stomach. Multiple times I needed to stop my run and try to flush out a small bug from my eyeball, however this proved to be a super-human task because my hands and eyebrows were covered in salty sweat, and getting ahold of anything around my eye was almost impossible. Thus, I finished up my run with an irritated eye and a chest covered in dead, sweaty bugs.
At this point it was time for some striders. I collected myself and tore up the hillside. Without hesitation, I stormed directly into a large cloud of swarming bugs. Both of my eyes caught bugs, while at the same time I inhaled a few others. I instantly had to stop, cough, and rub my eyes. I started sneezing and had to double over on my knees. After a few moments, I stood up and tried another strider, and almost as soon as I had started, I was again sidelined by an atrocious number of bugs. At that point I decided to call it a day. It took me almost 15 minutes to hack up the last of the bugs from my throat (and I could then breathe peacefully), and I needed to get to the sink in the bathroom in order to clean out my eyes properly. Even 24 hours later, my eye was still red from the repeated attempts to cleanse it of bugs. Truth be told, it was a fairly miserable end to a run.
This isn't to say, however, that all experiences with bugs are bad.
The week of July 4th we were visiting my wife's family in central Minnesota. Again, I found myself in a situation where I needed to do a late run, this time starting around 11:00pm, when it was completely dark under a starry sky. I was lent a work headlamp, then took off down the quiet highway on a cool, humid evening. As I've alluded to in previous posts, when I'm running at night and see lights in the ditch or countryside, I always get a little nervous about what may be out there. On this occasion, I started seeing lights right away with my headlamp; something didn't seem right, though. The lights were coming often and close to me. I decided to shut my headlight off and was treated to a tiny explosion of little lights.
Fireflies! They were everywhere! Here on the this rural Minnesota road there were fireflies on both sides of the road simply moving around, lighting on and off, creating almost a natural strobe light effect, topped off by a full sky of stars over my head. I never ran into a firefly, never inhaled any bugs, never got any bugs on my body, and never took any bugs to the eye, and I was treated to an incredible light display right up in my face! After a long, warm, stressful day of driving, it was such a relief to be out in nature as I had never seen it before. We occasionally have fireflies in North Dakota, but I had never seen them like this!
I don't know much about the singer 'Owl City', but I do know that he's from Minnesota and has a song named 'Fireflies', so maybe he's experienced something like this, too. I know if I was an artist, I'd make a song about it, but instead I'm a sometimes-blogger about running-related things, so here we are.
As I make final preparations for an impending move to the state of Virginia, I ask myself- will there be fireflies there? Will I inhale and run through swarms of bugs in the warm, coastal climate? Do the bugs disappear in the winter? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I can say that the abundance of bugs right now is a blessing in disguise. In a landscape that is quiet and dead for so many months of the year, what a refreshing breath of life to have the countryside literally swarming and buzzing with plants and animals of all kinds, including bugs!
The transformation of the countryside really cannot be understated. On the other side of the calendar, the temperature is below freezing for weeks at a time, all of the bugs and birds are either dead or gone, and only the hardiest of animals choose to not hibernate and keep living. Humans are huddled up inside watching TV or Netflix. Now, dads are grilling, lake people are lake-ing, runners are running, farmers are farming, and bugs are pestering all of us. We ward them off with high-level bug spray, campfire smoke, and bug screens. We do everything we can to insulate ourselves from the realest nature we get during the summer. I take different view- I love the bugs. Not only do they show abundant life, but they also show the power of change and its effect on all living things. I have a big life change coming up shortly, and I hope that where I go I can be brimming and full of life in all ways. Of course, some people will think of me as a firefly, and others will think of me as an annoying nat. Either way, I will be refuse to be cold and dead. Here we go.
With the advent of sufficient moisture this year, we have seen an explosion of bugs recently. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean mosquitos (which there are plenty of, to be sure) but bugs of all kinds. Last week I was returning home from a trip to the Rockies and was amazed at the number of yellow butterflies in the great plains of South Dakota. It seemed as if in the span of four days they had all bred. I hoped that when I got home we would have something similar. Sure enough, back here in western NoDak we've had monarch butterflies paying us a visit. Just last night they were EVERYWHERE and it was almost impossible to avoid hitting them while driving.
There is still much more than butterflies and mosquitos, though. We also have these annoying nats that simply hover in tight circles and export a loud buzzing sound that eats up the prairie. Throughout the heat of the day they are largely absent, leaving us with only the sound of the breeze and the cicadas, but once the sun and wind start to descend in the west, the nats come out in full force. I realized this fully and completely the other day when I started my run about an hour before sunset, or around 8:30 pm.
By this point the bugs were hanging thick in the sky, but as I discovered quickly, only above the plants growing alongside the road. As I do most days, I stayed in the middle of the dusty gravel road while running, moving aside only to yield to random vehicles. When a vehicle would pass me, I would dutifully move over, only to receive an onslaught of bugs in my eyes, nose, mouth, and on my chest. As the run continued, I began to accumulate black dots all over my chest and stomach. Multiple times I needed to stop my run and try to flush out a small bug from my eyeball, however this proved to be a super-human task because my hands and eyebrows were covered in salty sweat, and getting ahold of anything around my eye was almost impossible. Thus, I finished up my run with an irritated eye and a chest covered in dead, sweaty bugs.
At this point it was time for some striders. I collected myself and tore up the hillside. Without hesitation, I stormed directly into a large cloud of swarming bugs. Both of my eyes caught bugs, while at the same time I inhaled a few others. I instantly had to stop, cough, and rub my eyes. I started sneezing and had to double over on my knees. After a few moments, I stood up and tried another strider, and almost as soon as I had started, I was again sidelined by an atrocious number of bugs. At that point I decided to call it a day. It took me almost 15 minutes to hack up the last of the bugs from my throat (and I could then breathe peacefully), and I needed to get to the sink in the bathroom in order to clean out my eyes properly. Even 24 hours later, my eye was still red from the repeated attempts to cleanse it of bugs. Truth be told, it was a fairly miserable end to a run.
This isn't to say, however, that all experiences with bugs are bad.
The week of July 4th we were visiting my wife's family in central Minnesota. Again, I found myself in a situation where I needed to do a late run, this time starting around 11:00pm, when it was completely dark under a starry sky. I was lent a work headlamp, then took off down the quiet highway on a cool, humid evening. As I've alluded to in previous posts, when I'm running at night and see lights in the ditch or countryside, I always get a little nervous about what may be out there. On this occasion, I started seeing lights right away with my headlamp; something didn't seem right, though. The lights were coming often and close to me. I decided to shut my headlight off and was treated to a tiny explosion of little lights.
Fireflies! They were everywhere! Here on the this rural Minnesota road there were fireflies on both sides of the road simply moving around, lighting on and off, creating almost a natural strobe light effect, topped off by a full sky of stars over my head. I never ran into a firefly, never inhaled any bugs, never got any bugs on my body, and never took any bugs to the eye, and I was treated to an incredible light display right up in my face! After a long, warm, stressful day of driving, it was such a relief to be out in nature as I had never seen it before. We occasionally have fireflies in North Dakota, but I had never seen them like this!
I don't know much about the singer 'Owl City', but I do know that he's from Minnesota and has a song named 'Fireflies', so maybe he's experienced something like this, too. I know if I was an artist, I'd make a song about it, but instead I'm a sometimes-blogger about running-related things, so here we are.
As I make final preparations for an impending move to the state of Virginia, I ask myself- will there be fireflies there? Will I inhale and run through swarms of bugs in the warm, coastal climate? Do the bugs disappear in the winter? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I can say that the abundance of bugs right now is a blessing in disguise. In a landscape that is quiet and dead for so many months of the year, what a refreshing breath of life to have the countryside literally swarming and buzzing with plants and animals of all kinds, including bugs!
The transformation of the countryside really cannot be understated. On the other side of the calendar, the temperature is below freezing for weeks at a time, all of the bugs and birds are either dead or gone, and only the hardiest of animals choose to not hibernate and keep living. Humans are huddled up inside watching TV or Netflix. Now, dads are grilling, lake people are lake-ing, runners are running, farmers are farming, and bugs are pestering all of us. We ward them off with high-level bug spray, campfire smoke, and bug screens. We do everything we can to insulate ourselves from the realest nature we get during the summer. I take different view- I love the bugs. Not only do they show abundant life, but they also show the power of change and its effect on all living things. I have a big life change coming up shortly, and I hope that where I go I can be brimming and full of life in all ways. Of course, some people will think of me as a firefly, and others will think of me as an annoying nat. Either way, I will be refuse to be cold and dead. Here we go.
Monday, May 20, 2019
The Greatest Race I've Witnessed- State Track 2010
I walked into the breakfast room to grab some eggs, oatmeal, and whatever else the continental breakfast had to offer. We were staying at the Quality Inn, just like every school program from West Fargo seemed to do. Whether it was baseball, jazz band, all-state music, swimming, or track, we always stayed at this same hotel. Now coming up to the end of my junior year of high school, I was starting to get a hang of the place. This trip offered me a small pool, 3 roommates, 2 beds per room, a very average continental breakfast, and interstate traffic nearby to listen to all day. I was always an early riser, so not only were my teammates not at breakfast yet, but only one of my coaches was there. I grabbed a copy of the Bismarck Tribune and sat down to eat. The front page of the paper proudly proclaimed something I had just witnessed the day before: Laura Roesler had lost a race. There was even a big picture of the finish, where Morgan Milbrath, a freshman stud from Minot was beating her at the line.
It was a momentous moment in the history of North Dakota track and field. To fully explain how and why, it is necessary to understand the absolute death grip Laura Roesler had on track and field in the state for many years. Coming into her senior year, she already had a plethora of state championships to her name, and many in dominating fashion: she would win the 100, 200, 400, and 800. This means that on the first day she would have to run the 100, 200, and 400 prelims to qualify for the second day, and then during the second day win the 100, 200, 400, and 800 finals (the 800 doesn't have prelims in North Dakota). Now, to win the pure sprinting event (100) and the true mid-distance event (800) at the state meet is incredible by itself, but also consider that within this time frame she was also winning the state cross country meet in the fall, a 4km (2.5 mile) race. In a nutshell, she was winning the state titles in the both the shortest and longest running events competed in high school in North Dakota in the same year. Crazy, right?
Now, there was one year she didn't win state cross country. Why? Because she had competed in the Olympic Trials late into the summer. It may not come as a surprise, but being a dominant sprinter and distance runner simultaneously, her top event was the 800. In North Dakota, the state track qualifying standard in the 800 for girls is 2:25. Most years, a few girls go under 2:20 during the regular season, and the ones who win state track can get down in the 2:15 range. Every few years a girl will come along who can run 2:12, and getting under 2:10 will get you top-5 all time in state history. Laura Roesler ran 2:04 at the Olympic Trials in high school, making it all the way to the semifinals as a young girl against seasoned professionals.
Her reign was unparalleled and untouchable. The year 2010 was her senior year, and it was scheduled to be an amazing athlete going out in style, cruising to another 4 state titles, bringing her total well over a dozen for her decorated high school career. People showed up to get a final glimpse of the University of Oregon commit who had been re-writing what was possible for years. She attended Fargo South High School, the arch nemesis of my West Fargo High School, but greatness knows no artificial boundaries like school zones- I wanted to see her race, too.
And so state track descended upon the Community Bowl in Bismarck, where the weather wasn't perfect, but really wasn't too bad either. The first event she was had on the first day was the 100 meter dash. This race is run east-to-west right by the stands where all the fans sit. Because she had the top time in the state, Laura Roesler had a preferential lane assignment, and was given a moment to be introduced as the defending state champion in the event. The official called the girls to their blocks, had them come set, and fired the gun. Her gold-and-white jersey exploded from the blocks and started barreling down the home stretch.
But she wasn't separating. There was one girl right next to her. The crowd got louder as they realized what was going on. People were standing up and cheering and yelling. People stared in disbelief as, at the last second, the other girl stretched ahead and beat Roesler at the line. Many people immediately started wondering- who was that? Did Laura have a bad day and run poorly to get beat? The time appeared on the board- Morgan Milbrath, freshman from Minot High, had defeated Laura Roesler and had run a state record in the process, running 11.9. Roesler had run the exact same state record, too, but had been beat. The track area went silent for a few moments- was this real? As people slowly realized what happened, the cheers and choruses became loud and obvious- we were witnessing greatness.
I put the newspaper down and continued eating. Today was finals, the day we would find out if Roesler had left anything in the tank or if she was not going home with 4 state titles this year. On this day she would, as she had in years past, run 4 finals in the span of 3 hours. In the 200 and 400 prelims the day before, Milbrath had run the fastest times, including a 200 state record, but the two athletes were in separate heats during prelims. Today we would know the truth.
I had my own race to worry about, so I spent the morning preparing for my 3200, the third race on the track that day (if you were wondering, it went well; I ran my first sub-10 ever), but after that I was done for the year. It was time to sit back and watch.
The stands were packed. It was the day of finals, and the weather was nice for once. Everybody had heard about the major upset the day before, and had come to see it for themselves. The fan-stands were packed full. The grass bowl on the east side was full. Even the coach-stands looked more full than normal. It was go time.
Here it was: the 100. Roesler and Milbrath had the middle lanes and everybody's eyes. The gun went off, they raced side-by-side, and Milbrath beat Roesler AGAIN, 12.35 to 12.38. No state records this time, but Laura Roesler was beat in the finals at state track. People in the crowd went crazy at this new revelation, and started getting excited for what the remainder of the day would bring.
The next event was the 400 meter dash. The state record was 55.10, set by Laura Roesler the year before. In the prelims, Milbrath ran 55.45 in the second heat, and Roesler ran 56.02 in the first heat. Nobody else was close. The anticipation built steadily as the athletes took position in their lanes. We didn't know it, but we were about to be treated to a show.
The gun went off, and immediately the two girls were putting big gaps on everyone in the race. I was sitting in the grass on the east bowl side, and when the two girls came around the final turn, they had 30 meters on everyone and they were side-by-side. Everybody in the whole stadium was standing, clapping, cheering, yelling- I remember getting goosebumps just listening to the noise and watching the race. In retrospect it's quite hard to describe: as the two athletes hit the homestretch, I could actually hear each section of fans scream louder as they ran past- almost like doing the wave with their voices. Both of them powered down, grimacing and giving 100% effort. I was yelling, throwing my arms, and completely wrapped up in the whole event. As they approached the finish line, nobody could tell who actually had the lead. They both pushed their chests forward at the line right at the peak noise from the crowd. The next girl wouldn't finish for more than 5 seconds IN A STATE 400 FINAL.
Everybody looked to the main scoreboard to wait for the final results to be put up. It felt like forever until:
1 Laura Roesler Fargo South 53.25
2 Morgan Milbrath Minot 53.31
People cheered again. Both girls had broken the state record by almost 2 full seconds and had run the 4th and 5th fastest high school times, respectively, in the entire country that year. This event had really pitted the two studs against each other: Milbrath had proved she was better at the 100, while Roesler had proven she was better at 800. The 400 is where the two stood on equal ground, and all of us watching were better off for it.
Still to this day, I can't remember a race that more captivated everything that's exciting about competition: two athletes, on the highest stage in the state, performing at incredible levels, at the most important time, in front of the most fans. State track in North Dakota is second only to state basketball in many ways, and it was like the famous 1977 State B Boys Basketball Championship game between powerhouse Hillsboro and underdog Epping: anybody who was there will remember it. I know I will.
It was a momentous moment in the history of North Dakota track and field. To fully explain how and why, it is necessary to understand the absolute death grip Laura Roesler had on track and field in the state for many years. Coming into her senior year, she already had a plethora of state championships to her name, and many in dominating fashion: she would win the 100, 200, 400, and 800. This means that on the first day she would have to run the 100, 200, and 400 prelims to qualify for the second day, and then during the second day win the 100, 200, 400, and 800 finals (the 800 doesn't have prelims in North Dakota). Now, to win the pure sprinting event (100) and the true mid-distance event (800) at the state meet is incredible by itself, but also consider that within this time frame she was also winning the state cross country meet in the fall, a 4km (2.5 mile) race. In a nutshell, she was winning the state titles in the both the shortest and longest running events competed in high school in North Dakota in the same year. Crazy, right?
Now, there was one year she didn't win state cross country. Why? Because she had competed in the Olympic Trials late into the summer. It may not come as a surprise, but being a dominant sprinter and distance runner simultaneously, her top event was the 800. In North Dakota, the state track qualifying standard in the 800 for girls is 2:25. Most years, a few girls go under 2:20 during the regular season, and the ones who win state track can get down in the 2:15 range. Every few years a girl will come along who can run 2:12, and getting under 2:10 will get you top-5 all time in state history. Laura Roesler ran 2:04 at the Olympic Trials in high school, making it all the way to the semifinals as a young girl against seasoned professionals.
Her reign was unparalleled and untouchable. The year 2010 was her senior year, and it was scheduled to be an amazing athlete going out in style, cruising to another 4 state titles, bringing her total well over a dozen for her decorated high school career. People showed up to get a final glimpse of the University of Oregon commit who had been re-writing what was possible for years. She attended Fargo South High School, the arch nemesis of my West Fargo High School, but greatness knows no artificial boundaries like school zones- I wanted to see her race, too.
And so state track descended upon the Community Bowl in Bismarck, where the weather wasn't perfect, but really wasn't too bad either. The first event she was had on the first day was the 100 meter dash. This race is run east-to-west right by the stands where all the fans sit. Because she had the top time in the state, Laura Roesler had a preferential lane assignment, and was given a moment to be introduced as the defending state champion in the event. The official called the girls to their blocks, had them come set, and fired the gun. Her gold-and-white jersey exploded from the blocks and started barreling down the home stretch.
But she wasn't separating. There was one girl right next to her. The crowd got louder as they realized what was going on. People were standing up and cheering and yelling. People stared in disbelief as, at the last second, the other girl stretched ahead and beat Roesler at the line. Many people immediately started wondering- who was that? Did Laura have a bad day and run poorly to get beat? The time appeared on the board- Morgan Milbrath, freshman from Minot High, had defeated Laura Roesler and had run a state record in the process, running 11.9. Roesler had run the exact same state record, too, but had been beat. The track area went silent for a few moments- was this real? As people slowly realized what happened, the cheers and choruses became loud and obvious- we were witnessing greatness.
I put the newspaper down and continued eating. Today was finals, the day we would find out if Roesler had left anything in the tank or if she was not going home with 4 state titles this year. On this day she would, as she had in years past, run 4 finals in the span of 3 hours. In the 200 and 400 prelims the day before, Milbrath had run the fastest times, including a 200 state record, but the two athletes were in separate heats during prelims. Today we would know the truth.
I had my own race to worry about, so I spent the morning preparing for my 3200, the third race on the track that day (if you were wondering, it went well; I ran my first sub-10 ever), but after that I was done for the year. It was time to sit back and watch.
The stands were packed. It was the day of finals, and the weather was nice for once. Everybody had heard about the major upset the day before, and had come to see it for themselves. The fan-stands were packed full. The grass bowl on the east side was full. Even the coach-stands looked more full than normal. It was go time.
Here it was: the 100. Roesler and Milbrath had the middle lanes and everybody's eyes. The gun went off, they raced side-by-side, and Milbrath beat Roesler AGAIN, 12.35 to 12.38. No state records this time, but Laura Roesler was beat in the finals at state track. People in the crowd went crazy at this new revelation, and started getting excited for what the remainder of the day would bring.
The next event was the 400 meter dash. The state record was 55.10, set by Laura Roesler the year before. In the prelims, Milbrath ran 55.45 in the second heat, and Roesler ran 56.02 in the first heat. Nobody else was close. The anticipation built steadily as the athletes took position in their lanes. We didn't know it, but we were about to be treated to a show.
The gun went off, and immediately the two girls were putting big gaps on everyone in the race. I was sitting in the grass on the east bowl side, and when the two girls came around the final turn, they had 30 meters on everyone and they were side-by-side. Everybody in the whole stadium was standing, clapping, cheering, yelling- I remember getting goosebumps just listening to the noise and watching the race. In retrospect it's quite hard to describe: as the two athletes hit the homestretch, I could actually hear each section of fans scream louder as they ran past- almost like doing the wave with their voices. Both of them powered down, grimacing and giving 100% effort. I was yelling, throwing my arms, and completely wrapped up in the whole event. As they approached the finish line, nobody could tell who actually had the lead. They both pushed their chests forward at the line right at the peak noise from the crowd. The next girl wouldn't finish for more than 5 seconds IN A STATE 400 FINAL.
Everybody looked to the main scoreboard to wait for the final results to be put up. It felt like forever until:
1 Laura Roesler Fargo South 53.25
2 Morgan Milbrath Minot 53.31
People cheered again. Both girls had broken the state record by almost 2 full seconds and had run the 4th and 5th fastest high school times, respectively, in the entire country that year. This event had really pitted the two studs against each other: Milbrath had proved she was better at the 100, while Roesler had proven she was better at 800. The 400 is where the two stood on equal ground, and all of us watching were better off for it.
Still to this day, I can't remember a race that more captivated everything that's exciting about competition: two athletes, on the highest stage in the state, performing at incredible levels, at the most important time, in front of the most fans. State track in North Dakota is second only to state basketball in many ways, and it was like the famous 1977 State B Boys Basketball Championship game between powerhouse Hillsboro and underdog Epping: anybody who was there will remember it. I know I will.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Dark
*This post is a complement to my post "Light", written late last year*
It was just after 10pm when I finished throwing on my running clothes. My legs were tired, my body was tired, and after a full week of teaching and coaching, I was ready for sleep. Nonetheless, I must run. Searching through my bag, I quickly realize I forgot my running headlamp at home. No big deal, I reason to myself, I've run these gravel roads in the dark without a light before! Having no GPS watch either, I tie up my Brooks and head out the door. With no wind and an overcast sky, it is quiet and quite dark.
I start jogging, unable to see the road or anything that it might contain. There are some folks at camp this weekend, and I immediately worry about hitting one of their vehicles in the parking lot, so I swing as wide as I think I need, and turn to continue down the road. I'm nervous. I go past a staff housing unit, with a yard light, and for a few moments, all is well. Then, I'm thrust back into the darkness. I can barely make out the outline of the gravel road, noticing the line between the gravel and the grass ditch. I quickly become terrified. What if an animal jumped out at me? I couldn't even see if it was there!
I stopped briefly to think. I used to run in the dark all the time- what changed? Well, I suppose living in a town where in the past there has been supposed mountain lion sightings has me realizing that I might not be as indestructible as I once thought. So, I quickly run back to the house to grab something to protect myself with. I go into the kitchen and open up the utensils drawer. I pull out a butter knife. Would this be enough to protect me? Nah. I open another drawer and grab a much sharper vegetable-cutting knife. Yes, this will work. I take a short moment to consider the unreasonable-ness of carrying a sharp knife with me while running for 30 minutes, but I conclude it's my only option and head back out the door.
Into the dark.
I start down the parking lot again, carefully monitoring my arm swing so I don't impale myself. I pass the staff house with the light, and plunge back into the absolute darkness. Why couldn't there be a moon or something to at least shine SOME light? I seize up with fear immediately again. Each step forward allows me another chance to picture a predator pouncing at my throat, tearing at my jugular, when I didn't even know it was there in the first place. My pace slows to a timid hop, until my shuffle stops and I listen. Every whistle of grass, every movement of the twigs in the slight breeze is a death sentence of a strong animal running towards me. I hear something and immediately call out "GO!", because I've heard that you are supposed to make noise to deter mountain lions and other predators.
But I am no big cat- nay, I'm a scaredy cat. I turn around and quicken my pace all the way back to the house. I'm angry. I recall a few years ago running this very same gravel road with no light assistance, and having to run in the ditch because a car was coming and I didn't want to die. Why am I so afraid now? Why do I believe mountain lions lie in wait around every dark corner? The most important question though: is this an irrational fear, or was I irrational to no-light run in the dark previously?
I take a moment to do what I always do: think about what people did before the advent of one of our joys today: electricity. Before our lights of today, what did people do? My first thought was that they probably didn't go running around at night, for risk of, you know, being eaten or falling somewhere without the ability to get up and no lifealert available. Heck, maybe it was so dark that they wouldn't even be able to get home. Even though it's completely dark here, there is still a slight glow in the distance from lights.
Of course, it then occurs to me that people had fire, and could carry it around like they do on Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones (right?). I mean, is that reasonable? Would people have torches that they would walk around in the dark with? Was there any other light besides fire? I would suppose not, but what do I know?
I was now faced with a problem that fewer people every year in the US are faced with: what to do with a legitimate darkness that cannot be overcome with simply our eyes. Most people these days live somewhere with street lights, or even if they are out of town, the glow from the city bouncing off the clouds can illuminate the area just fine. Fewer and fewer places remain that are truly dark, even to the point where places that are naturally dark can get special names (check this out). Western North Dakota- outside of the Bakken Oil Field- is one of those areas. On a clear night, I can look up in the sky and see the Milky Way streaking across above my head, with millions of tiny little dots that makes my head spin. Just the other night I was running and saw a magnificent shooting star go across most of the sky, destined for the west. And, like I've said before, there are times when you can go outside and not see your own hand in front of your face. This was one of these nights.
I then remembered that lately at track meets, I'll be running across the track-bound football fields with my phone, (it's my stopwatch ok, I'm a millennial) and suddenly the flashlight will turn on. It must be something to do with a feature. I picked up my phone and shook it left and right. It vibrated, and the incredibly bright flashlight burst on. I shook it left and right again, and this time it vibrated and the light shut off. I had my solution! I would carry my phone in my hand! Naturally, this solution wouldn't work in the winter because phones shouldn't be exposed to belowfreezing zero temps for long periods of time, and it also wouldn't work in the summer because I'd sweat so much that I'd break it (true story, RIP green iPod). But alas, with temperatures in the 40s, a light breeze, no sun, and only a 30 minute run, I could make this work!
I confidently strode outside and flicked my phone light on. The path ahead of me illuminated, and I was off. This time I cut through the darkness like a gazelle, my feet bouncing off the gravel, making that distinct scratching sound that only running on dirt and rocks can bring. Then, I encountered my scariest moment of the day: a bright light came flying towards my face. I immediately ducked out of the way, and struggled to breathe as my heart rate rapidly increased.
Alas, it was a moth. Even with a light, I had been scared by a moth. My weakness had now been fully revealed. I was a wimp, plain and simple. Humans have fought darkness for thousands and millions of years, and even with my in-hand lighting technology, I was almost brought to my knees by a tiny, flying light (a moth), that I only saw because my phone light was on. I decided that it was time to suck it up and go. I continued down the road with fervor, occasionally using my phone light to scan my surroundings for eyeballs sticking out of the tall prairie grass, but otherwise keeping it in front of me. I was reminded of a time I went for a 10 mile run at 11:00pm on a Sunday night, with school on Monday morning. Ingrid drove behind me with her vehicle and lights, because she was worried about my safety.
As I clicked off the first mile, I decided to give darkness a try again. After all, I hadn't seen any eyes in the prairie, and even if I did, they would likely belong to a white tail deer. I flicked my phone off, and for a few seconds, all was dark again. I was running, but the only thing I could see was the faint outline of the road where it met the grass. There could have been a brilliantly colored statue of Pope Francis in the middle of the road, and I would've slammed into it. After a few moments, I flicked on the light again and made a pass around me to make sure there were no animals. There were none.
I realized at this point that a few years ago I had come across a bull in the ditch right here. Somehow he had gotten through the fence, and when I came around the corner, he just stood there and looked at me. Naturally, I went and ran in the ditch on the other side and nothing happened, but I imagined if that had been in the dark and I was running without a light. These bulls happen to be black, and any hope to see it would be naught. I started to wonder if maybe it never was a good idea to run in the dark without any light. Forget mountain lions, I could be killed by an angry fugitive that was destined to be burger someday.
Towards the end of my second mile, my phone vibrated and the light shut off. I was instantly scared and flicked my wrist back and forth. With a sigh of relief, I watched the light come back on. I must've moved my arm back into my normal running cadence without realizing, and shut it off. That was a good sign for me, because I was starting to relax and daydream again. One of my favorite things to do when I'm stressed is to go for a run and let my mind wander. Eventually it'll settle on visions of past races, or visions of races to come. Today I was dreaming of the Maah Daah Hey Trail race later this summer, maybe the 10k. I ran the marathon last year, and it killed me (evidence here).
And so the rest of my run I alternated between turning my light on and off to see the dark, but also making sure I was safe. I saw no person, no predator. I allowed my mind to be freed from the fresh stresses of schools- the adults, not the students. And you know what? When I came back into camp, I thought I saw an animal cross the road ahead of me. I was nervous for about a second, but then I realized:
It was a moth.
It was just after 10pm when I finished throwing on my running clothes. My legs were tired, my body was tired, and after a full week of teaching and coaching, I was ready for sleep. Nonetheless, I must run. Searching through my bag, I quickly realize I forgot my running headlamp at home. No big deal, I reason to myself, I've run these gravel roads in the dark without a light before! Having no GPS watch either, I tie up my Brooks and head out the door. With no wind and an overcast sky, it is quiet and quite dark.
I start jogging, unable to see the road or anything that it might contain. There are some folks at camp this weekend, and I immediately worry about hitting one of their vehicles in the parking lot, so I swing as wide as I think I need, and turn to continue down the road. I'm nervous. I go past a staff housing unit, with a yard light, and for a few moments, all is well. Then, I'm thrust back into the darkness. I can barely make out the outline of the gravel road, noticing the line between the gravel and the grass ditch. I quickly become terrified. What if an animal jumped out at me? I couldn't even see if it was there!
I stopped briefly to think. I used to run in the dark all the time- what changed? Well, I suppose living in a town where in the past there has been supposed mountain lion sightings has me realizing that I might not be as indestructible as I once thought. So, I quickly run back to the house to grab something to protect myself with. I go into the kitchen and open up the utensils drawer. I pull out a butter knife. Would this be enough to protect me? Nah. I open another drawer and grab a much sharper vegetable-cutting knife. Yes, this will work. I take a short moment to consider the unreasonable-ness of carrying a sharp knife with me while running for 30 minutes, but I conclude it's my only option and head back out the door.
Into the dark.
I start down the parking lot again, carefully monitoring my arm swing so I don't impale myself. I pass the staff house with the light, and plunge back into the absolute darkness. Why couldn't there be a moon or something to at least shine SOME light? I seize up with fear immediately again. Each step forward allows me another chance to picture a predator pouncing at my throat, tearing at my jugular, when I didn't even know it was there in the first place. My pace slows to a timid hop, until my shuffle stops and I listen. Every whistle of grass, every movement of the twigs in the slight breeze is a death sentence of a strong animal running towards me. I hear something and immediately call out "GO!", because I've heard that you are supposed to make noise to deter mountain lions and other predators.
But I am no big cat- nay, I'm a scaredy cat. I turn around and quicken my pace all the way back to the house. I'm angry. I recall a few years ago running this very same gravel road with no light assistance, and having to run in the ditch because a car was coming and I didn't want to die. Why am I so afraid now? Why do I believe mountain lions lie in wait around every dark corner? The most important question though: is this an irrational fear, or was I irrational to no-light run in the dark previously?
I take a moment to do what I always do: think about what people did before the advent of one of our joys today: electricity. Before our lights of today, what did people do? My first thought was that they probably didn't go running around at night, for risk of, you know, being eaten or falling somewhere without the ability to get up and no lifealert available. Heck, maybe it was so dark that they wouldn't even be able to get home. Even though it's completely dark here, there is still a slight glow in the distance from lights.
Of course, it then occurs to me that people had fire, and could carry it around like they do on Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones (right?). I mean, is that reasonable? Would people have torches that they would walk around in the dark with? Was there any other light besides fire? I would suppose not, but what do I know?
I was now faced with a problem that fewer people every year in the US are faced with: what to do with a legitimate darkness that cannot be overcome with simply our eyes. Most people these days live somewhere with street lights, or even if they are out of town, the glow from the city bouncing off the clouds can illuminate the area just fine. Fewer and fewer places remain that are truly dark, even to the point where places that are naturally dark can get special names (check this out). Western North Dakota- outside of the Bakken Oil Field- is one of those areas. On a clear night, I can look up in the sky and see the Milky Way streaking across above my head, with millions of tiny little dots that makes my head spin. Just the other night I was running and saw a magnificent shooting star go across most of the sky, destined for the west. And, like I've said before, there are times when you can go outside and not see your own hand in front of your face. This was one of these nights.
I then remembered that lately at track meets, I'll be running across the track-bound football fields with my phone, (it's my stopwatch ok, I'm a millennial) and suddenly the flashlight will turn on. It must be something to do with a feature. I picked up my phone and shook it left and right. It vibrated, and the incredibly bright flashlight burst on. I shook it left and right again, and this time it vibrated and the light shut off. I had my solution! I would carry my phone in my hand! Naturally, this solution wouldn't work in the winter because phones shouldn't be exposed to below
I confidently strode outside and flicked my phone light on. The path ahead of me illuminated, and I was off. This time I cut through the darkness like a gazelle, my feet bouncing off the gravel, making that distinct scratching sound that only running on dirt and rocks can bring. Then, I encountered my scariest moment of the day: a bright light came flying towards my face. I immediately ducked out of the way, and struggled to breathe as my heart rate rapidly increased.
Alas, it was a moth. Even with a light, I had been scared by a moth. My weakness had now been fully revealed. I was a wimp, plain and simple. Humans have fought darkness for thousands and millions of years, and even with my in-hand lighting technology, I was almost brought to my knees by a tiny, flying light (a moth), that I only saw because my phone light was on. I decided that it was time to suck it up and go. I continued down the road with fervor, occasionally using my phone light to scan my surroundings for eyeballs sticking out of the tall prairie grass, but otherwise keeping it in front of me. I was reminded of a time I went for a 10 mile run at 11:00pm on a Sunday night, with school on Monday morning. Ingrid drove behind me with her vehicle and lights, because she was worried about my safety.
As I clicked off the first mile, I decided to give darkness a try again. After all, I hadn't seen any eyes in the prairie, and even if I did, they would likely belong to a white tail deer. I flicked my phone off, and for a few seconds, all was dark again. I was running, but the only thing I could see was the faint outline of the road where it met the grass. There could have been a brilliantly colored statue of Pope Francis in the middle of the road, and I would've slammed into it. After a few moments, I flicked on the light again and made a pass around me to make sure there were no animals. There were none.
I realized at this point that a few years ago I had come across a bull in the ditch right here. Somehow he had gotten through the fence, and when I came around the corner, he just stood there and looked at me. Naturally, I went and ran in the ditch on the other side and nothing happened, but I imagined if that had been in the dark and I was running without a light. These bulls happen to be black, and any hope to see it would be naught. I started to wonder if maybe it never was a good idea to run in the dark without any light. Forget mountain lions, I could be killed by an angry fugitive that was destined to be burger someday.
Towards the end of my second mile, my phone vibrated and the light shut off. I was instantly scared and flicked my wrist back and forth. With a sigh of relief, I watched the light come back on. I must've moved my arm back into my normal running cadence without realizing, and shut it off. That was a good sign for me, because I was starting to relax and daydream again. One of my favorite things to do when I'm stressed is to go for a run and let my mind wander. Eventually it'll settle on visions of past races, or visions of races to come. Today I was dreaming of the Maah Daah Hey Trail race later this summer, maybe the 10k. I ran the marathon last year, and it killed me (evidence here).
And so the rest of my run I alternated between turning my light on and off to see the dark, but also making sure I was safe. I saw no person, no predator. I allowed my mind to be freed from the fresh stresses of schools- the adults, not the students. And you know what? When I came back into camp, I thought I saw an animal cross the road ahead of me. I was nervous for about a second, but then I realized:
It was a moth.
Monday, April 22, 2019
When the World Looks a Bit Different
One year ago at state track, one of my athletes and I were
rested upon the fence near the high jump pit, watching Class A girls high jump.
The first race of the day, the 300 hurdles, was coming up shortly, and I
explained to my athlete that the winner of each of the races on the final day
would be a state champion. The gun went off, the Class B boys exploded from the
blocks, and began tearing down the backstretch. Josh Knutson, a senior from our
region, ended up plowing through the finish line in first place, both arms up
and a quick but strong celebratory yell. My athlete looked and showed me the
goosebumps on her arm; I showed her mine.
Throughout the meet, the athletes I had brought along
excitedly watched, as performance after performance showed them levels of
competition they had yet to witness previously. All of a sudden, these small
Class B meets they were accustomed to looked inferior compared to these
incredible athletes. In a sense, their eyes were opened to new possibilities
and new levels of thinking. At least for a day, the world would look a little
bit different.
We all have our own stories of life-changing experiences
that switched our perspective on things. We normally hear about this in the
context of tragedy, such as death or near-death events. However, it can be in
other ways as well. For example, my perspective on mathematics was forever
changed during my junior and senior years of college, when I was introduced to
proofs. Proofs seemed pretty straightforward until outside-of-the-box thinking
was required. If we were talking about infinity, nothing made a lick of sense.
Sometimes our professor would wonder why we didn’t just simply redefine
something in our own way to accomplish our goal. It was mind-boggling and hard.
I never could master how to do a good proof, but boy does it make me look at
algebra differently.
As runners, we have that moment
too. For most of us, it was some kind of breakthrough in our own training or
racing that allowed us to realize a potential we didn’t know we had. For
others, it’s being witness to something incredible, like Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-2
marathon attempt or Usain Bolt’s 100m world record. For me, it was a race. I’d
like to tell you the story.
I was sitting on the bus, en route to Ames
when it came out. I grabbed my phone and opened up to Iowa State’s track page,
where they had the meet entries and heat sheets posted. I hurriedly scrolled
down to the mile, and saw that I was put in the fast heat- the mile invitational.
All of the other athletes were from Iowa State, the University of Iowa, Kansas
State and the University of Minnesota. The slowest seed time in the heat was
mine, 4:15. The second slowest? 4:09. I died a little.
For the first time since I started college, I had maintained
healthy, strong training all through the summer and fall months. It was now
January and I was ready to show off some fitness at indoor meets. Over
Christmas break I had been training hard on the gravel roads outside of Horace,
ND, fighting the brutal winter cold and wind. We did a lot of fartlek workouts,
because few (if any) of us had access to a quality indoor facility, and those
of us who were outside had to wear lots of heavy layers to stay warm.
I came off of Christmas break and had a great first meet at
the University of Minnesota, winning the 3k with a time of 8:41, a new personal
best. I knew I had more in the tank because I had too much energy left the last
200 meters. I had more hard workouts over the next two weeks, and I was ready
to go to Iowa State and improve on my 4:19 personal best in the mile. My coach
agreed, and seeded me at 4:15, not because I had run that time, but because he
thought I was capable- I only needed to be in the right race. Well, I certainly
got into a faster race.
All of this was sifting through my brain as I looked up on
TFRRS (a track results database that all NCAA schools use) the previous results
of all of my competitors in my heat. What I found was exactly what I feared-
these kids were simply better than me. All of their times from last track
season and the earlier cross country season demonstrated an overall better
quality of runner than I was. I had run 4:24 for the mile in high school, and
had worked my butt off to drag it down to 4:19 in college. These guys were
going to run under 4:10. I activated panic mode.
You see, TFRRS is a double-edged sword. It’s great for
finding results, researching opponents, and creating performance lists for
different conferences and regions. In fact, TFRRS is basically THE resource
used for entries into higher-level NCAA meets like Stanford and Mt. SAC.
However, it also can cascade you down a dark hole of comparison, where you can
write yourself off of a race before it even starts, or you can assert yourself
as the easy victor before the gun goes off. For a stats guy like me, people
were defined by their numbers: they were this fast recently, which means they
were this fast now. A person’s personal bests were everything. Everybody at
track meets would identify people from other teams not by their major or their
hometown, but by their PRs. Of course, numbers can’t take into account illness,
injury, training struggles, tiredness, weariness, class struggles, or family
problems. You are what you race, and these guys raced pretty darn fast.
The bus pulled up to our hotel in Ames, Iowa,
about an 8-hour drive from our starting point in Grand Forks. As we exited, I
approached my coach and expressed my fear and dismay at my heat draw. “How can
I race with these guys?” I asked. “You know, some people’s best races come when
they just hang on to faster people for as long as they can and see if they make
it.” He said, and then with a chuckle, “Who knows, maybe you’ll run 4:12?” This
was absurd, of course, to think about running a more than 7-second personal
best in the mile in college, but I resigned myself to getting mentally ready to
hop on a really fast train and hang on for dear life.
I approached the starting line with my other competitors. I
was in lane two lined up next to a much taller, more muscular guy from Kansas
State. While doing my warm-up strides on the track, all of the other runners
were gliding past while going the other direction, and they all looked so FAST.
I had to control my mind and keep telling myself ‘just hang on, just hang on’.
The meet official stepped up to us and said, “I hear Minnesota has a rabbit,
which of you is that?” A guy with a bright brown and yellow uniform that said
‘Minnesota’ on it stepped forward to present himself. The official acknowledged
him and told us, “We’ve got some guys here trying to break the meet record and
run 4:06. So the rabbit has been instructed to go out in 2:03 for the first 800
and then drop out. He’ll be in the lane six, so let him get to the front
without any trouble.”
My jaw hit the track. FOUR OH SIX???? TWO OH THREE??? A
RABBIT??? I had never been in a race with a rabbit before, but hearing how fast
these guys wanted to run, compared to what kind of runner I was, led me to
become instantly more nervous. My hope was that this race would be tactical: it
is understood in the running world that tactical races run slower, because
there is no one willing to go to the lead and pound everyone else into the
ground. They simply run and look at each other until the end, when they sprint
like crazy people the last 200 meters and see who wins. However, it had just
been announced to us that we were running an honest-to-God time trial, because
some people in my heat wanted to break the meet record.
Well, crap.
The starter had us step up to the line, stopped us, and the
gun went off. The rabbit sprinted to the front, everyone else tucked into lanes
one and two, and we were off. I tucked into the inside of lane one and felt the
pack pulling me right away. I found myself having to turn the wheels harder
than I ever had in the first lap of a mile, and I was still starting to lose
some ground. Right away in the first lap I realized I had a decision to make:
race smart and fall back a little to survive, or throw it down and fricken go for
it.
I immediately picked up my pace to approximately “suicidal”.
Think about the joke of a small child holding onto the leash of a large German
Shepherd, but really the dog is dragging the child along the sidewalk. That’s
the image I want to convey for this race: the only thing that mattered was
hanging onto the jersey in front of me. We flew around the track once, twice,
and on the third lap we came up to the 800 split.
Two oh Two
Two oh Three
Two oh Four
I passed in just under 2:04. The pack had about 1-2 seconds
on me, but I was holding my own. The rabbit had dropped out, and the boys in
front were fighting for that record. My teammates were cheering for me because
they noticed I was putting it all on the line. I didn’t mention this earlier,
but at a big D1 meet like this, most of the distance heats are run in the
morning before the rest of the meet, so as to not bore the fans during the day.
This generally leaves the fastest section- called the ‘Invite’ section- for the
afternoon. I was in the invite section of the mile, the only one of our
distance squad still competing. So whether they were bored or really wanted me
to do well, they really didn’t have anything else to do other than cheer me on.
As we grinded through the second half of the race, I noticed
that the gap in front of me was starting to shrink. With two 300-meter laps to
go, I went around an Iowa guy. With one lap to go, there was a pack of four or
five athletes within striking distance. I was all-out sprinting, and my tank
was starting to run dry. The intensity of the pace was wearing me down, but
apparently I wasn’t the only one. The runners who had held onto the leaders
early on were drowning in lactic acid and starting to fade. I had teammates
screaming at me and fired up, because they saw my opportunity to get some more
runners.
I dug deep into my reserves and shifted to my last gear and
put everything into my last stretch. As I pulled closer to the group, I came
the last turn and got a view of the finish line. My brain wasn’t working, I was
sprinting all out trying to catch a couple runners, and the clock was ticking
away, 4:05, 4:06, 4:07. The leaders were finishing and this was the second
group. I pulled up to a Minnesota runner and an Iowa State runner and pushed.
They pushed. I pushed. The clock was ticking. People were yelling. I pushed.
They pushed.
I crossed the line right before 4 minutes, 12 seconds. I
took 6th place and scored our only points for the men’s team at this
meet, but none of that mattered. I saw the time on the clock: 4:11.97. I smiled
and turned around. My teammates were coming towards me saying “HORACE!!” (my
nickname, same as my hometown), excited about my time. I was on cloud nine. I
never in a million years thought I’d ever run this fast in the mile, and there
was still plenty of season left. During my cooldown with Dwight, I just
couldn’t stop smiling.
After the meet, I remembered what my coach said about how
maybe if I could hang on I could run 4:12. He was right.
My whole world looked different after that meet.
What kinds of events had made your life look different? How have they shaped you into who you are? What your life looks like without these events happening? Some thoughts for your day!
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