Flashes of Panic

While I was injured, I bought myself a pair of new spikes (aka “shoes with teeth”) promising myself that I’d race in them “someday.”

Someday came today, and it may also have been the last time those spikes ever see use. It was the NESCAC championships, and I ran the “open” division.

The “open” race is an addition since my day. Three of my four years, NESCACs were a straight championship race: seven runners per team started, and everyone else watched (if they came at all.) My senior year, they expanded the “varsity” races to include nine runners, though they still scored it as though teams of seven were running. This was a nod to how tough competition was in the conference; in essence, it allowed a team with one runner having a bad day to “sub” someone else in, simply because you all ran and the people who ran best, counted. I was having a hard time senior year, and I came to NESCACS as #8 and used it to race my way onto the top 7 for the regional meet two weeks later. (Where I ran poorly, but never mind.)

Then they added the “open” race, which amounted to combined mens and women’s junior varsity races, as well as an alumni race. (I suppose they had the alumni race my senior year as well, but I barely remember it.) This sounds like a wishy-washy “we’re about participation” move on the part of the conference, and maybe it is, but it’s also a nod to the fact that the NESCAC is one of the deepest and toughest conferences in Division III. A lot of people who would be running full varsity seasons elsewhere in Division III can’t get on the varsity in the NESCAC. And teams are bigger now. We had trouble getting five women on the line; Tufts traveled with thirty-one women. Thirty-one!

Who then raced in soggy, slick mud and horizontal rain. I screwed in half-inch spikes (“You could climb trees with these!”), reminded myself that I am a stupendous badass, and went out to race.

The less said about my own race, the better. I’m listed as a blank line in the results, because while I had a number, they had nothing sufficiently waterproof to record my name and affiliation. There were a lot more people behind me than the results suggest, and it’s unclear exactly how far any of us ran—not everyone ran the same distance, and I suspect there were more distances than just 6k or 8k (if anyone ran the correct course.) At some point, I don’t remember where, it stopped being about beating the other guys on the course and more about beating the course itself.

OK, maybe I do know where: it was the lower “marsh” section of the course, where the tide had come in and we were running through nearly-knee-deep salt water. It was cold, but I came out much cleaner than I went in. Several minutes later, I grunted something encouraging to a Williams runner (normally, I wouldn’t do that, but I was passing him,) and he said, “If this was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

I didn’t check, but I suspect I was the oldest person to race today. Accusations of living in the past and/or similar crimes may be sent care of this site. Tomorrow, I’m back in the pool.

Meanwhile, those new spikes? There was enough mud inside the shoes, post-race, to grow grass. Inside.

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