Run Your Own Race

Run Your Own Race

My high school track team was like a mashup of Bad News Bears, The Mighty Ducks, and the Little Giants. We were certainly underdogs. That position has always suited me. I think, in many respects, that disposition and some of the lessons our coach sought to instill in us have served me well in life. I had the opportunity recently to reflect on one of those lessons in particular which then reminded me of a few of the others.

Champions are Made, Not Born

The first time Coach Brown said this to us, he kinda botched the apparel manufacturer’s slogan while trying to introduce this theme (“It takes a little more to make a Champion ?”). And we laughed at him for the flub, as teenagers are apt to do. Brown stuck the landing though once he gathered himself. And this was his drumbeat over the next 4 years that I was a part of the team. I was not a natural talent. I joined the team thinking I was fast simply because I had been able to outrun anyone who had tried to rob me. I learned there’s a difference between being ‘quick’ (which I was) and ‘fast’ (which the champions were). I wanted to be fast. Many of us regulars dutifully did the various workouts and sometimes eccentric drills that Brown told us would incrementally serve to fashion champions out of us who weren’t natural born phenoms. There was the physical discomfort in practice. Running harder and longer than we had ever previously done to increase endurance and stamina. There was the sacrificing of time we might have otherwise enjoyed (but squandered) cutting up with friends after school. The refinement of our craft required this of us if we really hoped to ever be champions.

Run Your Own Race

In those early days, our team was not particularly competitive, and I, even less so. I think that’s why this lesson in particular stuck with me. The more we trained, I started to make incremental improvements in my individual times. Brown encouraged folks like me to think of the meets as opportunities to get recorded times at confirmed distances. We didn’t have our own athletic field or home track. We ran vertical loops up the side stairway, across the top floor hallway, and down the opposite stairway. Or we ran laps around our city block. In later years, we traveled to another high school to use their track when they weren’t practicing. It was in a rougher part of town far removed from my own neighborhood; I wasn’t all that comfortable going there. It was what we had to do if we wanted to get better.

Those first meets were embarrassing. In my races, I wasn’t even close to the other athletes. It really was like running my own race. I’d come back to the bleachers and Brown would tell me the things I did well. He’d tell me what he wanted me to focus on for the next race. It was never about the other athletes. “Don’t spring right up out of the blocks. Stay low; pump your arms; work your leg drive. Be an airplane at take-off.” I’d go out and try to execute his directives. And we’d talk more. Sometimes there weren’t words, just looks. Or an eye roll. But it was never about what anyone else was doing.

‘Run your own race’ was about remembering our specific game plans and sticking to it. You could go out too fast, gas out, and have nothing left for your final kick. You could get excited coming down the final stretch and maybe kick too soon and end up a second or two off of your best time. You were running someone else’s race and not yours. ?

No One Can Take Anything From You

This last one isn’t exactly something Brown said, but it was more about the things he did. Starting around my junior year, I really began to campaign to be named captain my senior year. Our team had always been small, but we were starting to garner interest from underclassmen who were trying out for roster spots. I wanted to lead them. Brown seemed annoyed by my naked ambition and would often trip me up when I sought to wield implied authority.

“Hmmmph, any captain of mine needs to be able to ______.” And I’d try earnestly for the next several weeks to improve whatever ‘blank’ was.

It was around that time Brown started being much more guarded with our times and time-keeping. He would normally tell us our splits or let us know if we were trending in the right direction, setting a personal record (PR) etc. He yelled to me, “I care about effort, not times. Show me effort.” Not long after that, I got bumped from the 55m dash in favor of a freshman. Brown would say things like, “How you gonna be captain when freshmen are coming in off the street taking your spots?” A sophomore got my 200m leg in the sprint medley, and I got pushed to the 400m leg. I hated the 400m. I never got to run against either of the proxy runners in practice, and I was uncharacteristically unsettled and unwilling to challenge them to a foot race outside of practice. I took Brown at his word that they had beaten me in our practice heats. I didn’t hold anything against those guys; I just doubled down on my individual reps and tried to find another gear in hopes of being placed back into my favorite events.

Then we got to the first indoor meet of that season. And I could see the official’s times. “Brown why’d you gas them guys up like they were faster than me when they’re not?!” He just smiled and rolled his eyes. I didn’t get those spots back either. The fact that it wasn’t about merit and seemed arbitrary pissed me off. It was the beginning of the chip on my shoulder I carry to this day.

Something else happened as a result of this gamesmanship. By outdoor season, many of the shorter sprints were given to the proxy runners and I was stuck with the 400m. There was an invitational held at Howard University’s campus that drew some of the suburban teams into the city. We were up against some teams that we hadn’t previously run against. I had third leg and we were still in the mix with the other teams. I had planned to take the first curve out easy, build up speed over the next 200 meters and just hold on for dear life the final straightaway. That is not a competitive 400m strategy; that is just the one I was using so as not to die as a result of the distance. We had a clean exchange and I began my dutiful service of flirting with heat exhaustion so we could field a complete relay team and earn meet points. That all was interrupted as I got to the top of the curve and could hear another runner approaching rapidly towards my inside shoulder. Generally people do not pass you on the curve, but if they do, they do so to the outside. This MF spiked my calf, elbowed me, and made some disparaging comments as he muscled past. It was disrespectful. And a spectator on the infield yelled at me confirming such. “Get him for what he done!”

I had not formed in my mind what I would do once I got to him, but I reasoned that the first step in the process was to catch up to him. People talk about seeing red. I think I saw fuchsia. It was more of a subtle tint to the sky and the bleachers as I barreled down the back stretch. There was at least one if not two runners still behind me, but I never saw or heard them. All I could see was the jersey ahead of me, and I was closing in. This NEVER happened in the 400. At this point, my heart is about to jump out of my chest, partly because of the rage and partly because of the pace at which I was moving. I hit the (figurative) wall right at the top of the final straightaway, but I’m still pissed. I’m mad now because I didn’t run my race; the dude bumped me; and now each of my legs feel like they weigh a thousand pounds with 100 meters to go. When we were tired, Brown would yell to us to work our arms. I just worked my arms that last 100 meters and carried out the exchange. Even if I had seen the dude, between the tears (and blurred vision) and physical exhaustion, I wouldn’t have been able to put up much of a fight anyway. I went up to the stands to complain to Brown, but he had left the meet early. He hadn’t been feeling well lately.

“Did y’all see what that MF did to me?!”

“Will, you ran a 54 split!”

I had never run sub 60 seconds in the 400… ever. The top HS time in the country around that time belonged to Obea Moore who could cover the distance in 45 seconds. 54 seconds is still a world away from Moore, but I was now at least in the same solar system with people who were fast at that distance.

At the next practice, Brown was incredulous. “There must’ve been a timing error,” he said dismissively. I committed to repeating the effort. My next opportunity was maybe 2 weeks later. I still hated the event, but I was determined to have Brown witness it. There was no nemesis this time. I just channeled the anger of the first incident and the resentment from not being believed by Brown into the next run. And I didn’t hold anything back.

53 seconds.

My senior year didn’t go the way I had hoped. Brown kept to his word and did not name me or anyone else captain. His health was now impacting his attendance at practice. I ran practices in his absence. Sometimes guys just went on their own long runs during cross country season. Indoor season was kind of hit-and-miss. When Brown wasn’t there, there was less accountability from other athletes. People started no-showing for practices and meets. By outdoor season, it was just me. I remember my last practice with Brown. It was just he and I. He told me that I wasn’t a star, but I was a hard worker; that he hoped I would stick with it in college. I asked him why he never made me captain. “You’re the only one here. You need me to tell you that you’re the captain of yourself. You don’t need a title.” We talked some more. He didn’t want me hung up on a title; he just wanted me to demonstrate the qualities of leadership and do what the moment required of me. I know now that sometimes that means you take the lead; sometimes it means that you practice good followship and support a leader. You do what the moment calls for, not what an arbitrary title might suggest. He also finally explained those head games of the prior year. “You always did what I told you. Nothing more, nothing less. It was only when you felt like something was taken away from you that you fought back. You tried harder. I put you in those harder races because I saw that you would fight.”

I learned that day that sometimes when we think someone is doing something to us, they’re really doing something for us.

He let me think that I had lost something to help me shift to where I needed to go in my track career and in life. To push through the uncomfortable, and be better for it.

I’m still not keen on being manipulated, but I guess it was worth it for the lesson. LOLZ

For all of that, I am grateful.