The Last Time I Raced

The last time I raced was the state varsity cross-country championships in 1993. I was twelve years old and my team placed eleventh in the state. The next year I joined the marching band and the corss-country team placed first in state. Incidentally, the marching band won more contests that year than we'd ever wone before. It was a banner year for Northside Christian School, and with a K-12 population of 1000, one of the opportunities presented to students at the school--aside from the enviable luxury of being brainwashed by the Southern Baptist Convention--was the very good chance that if you were a musician, an athlete, a scholar or all of the above, chances were you'd be pushed into competition with upperclassmen while you were still in junior high. When I joined the cross-country team there wasn't even a question of whether I'd be on JV or varsity...there simply wasn't a JV team, and varsity needed a second alternate. I ran seven-minute miles, culminating in a 6:54 personal best, and a 14:08 personal best two-mile, the length of the girls' meets. In Florida the weather is easily bewildering and despite the fact that we routinely ran between ten and twenty miles a day, girls raced a comfortable two miles to the boys' 5ks, then considered too long and hot for the fragile females.

The last time I raced I wore a silver-and-blue-and-white cross-country uniform, a sleeveless, shapeless top over baggy basketball-style shorts and Asics running shoes. The shapeless top housed a shapeless, bony girl-child's torso, the long, baggy shorts accommodated well-muscled, nicely-shaped legs and the Asics were stuffed with bony feet constantly propelling me forward. The last time I raced I was just doing what I was supposed to do: run, dammit. Run fast. Run hard. Wear yourself out. Be red-faced, bleary-eyed, wild-haired and sweaty as hell when you cross that finish line. Run hard and fast. Or else.

This time, things were a little different. For one, nobody cared what my place time was. Including me. I wasn't out to win any medals or help a team place. I was registered in the citizens' race of the Bolder Boulder, one anonymous face among a sea of thousands. 48,000 or thereabouts, to be totally accurate. I knew five other fellow racers: my boyfriend Gregory, my good friend Brian, and Gregory's friends Janelle, Brad and Shannon. Instead of being surrounded by my teammates, I was surrounded by a sea of teeming humanity, everyone from hard-core runners who'd trained for months hoping to keep their finish time within a ten-second span to...well, to people like me, overweight former athletes who quit the worst habit anyone could ever start two months before and started haphazardly training. My "uniform" this time was a white Champion sleeveless shirt made of a synthetic material called Dri-Max or Dri-Fit or something of that nature, a pair of light blue running shorts and an awesome pair of running kicks that Gregory bought for me as a congratulatory present for quitting smoking. Oddly, they're Asics. This time, I didn't worry about my finish time so much...around an hour would be nice, but no big deal. I wasn't out to prove myself to anyone. I really just wanted a couple of things: I wanted to finish, no matter what. I also wanted to run the stadium, that is, the last tenth of a mile or so, where all of the runners for the Bolder Boulder wind up, looping into and around inside of CU's Folsom Field, my alma mater's football stadium. I wanted to run that part. The rest I'd leave to...fate? Chance? Destiny? God? Basically, whatever was looking out for me.

It was the coldest Bolder Boulder I've ever seen. I've lived here in this town to witness six Bolder Boulders now, and I was rather infuriated at the weather. However, being a Coloradan, my level of weather-based fury is rather tempered to a cool shrug. I'm used to the fickle weather, and it seemed fitting, after awhile, that my first Bolder Boulder would be the coldest anyone had seen in years. I fiddled with the safety pins holding my bib to my shirtfront driving us all over to the start line. It was the first time in ages I'd worn a race bib. GB317 on the front, and on the back I wore an "I'm Running In Honor Of" memorial bib. It wasn't in memory, but it was in honor...in my own little way, I had to dedicate this race to higher powers than myself, so I figured I'd run in honor of "those whose support got me this far", as I wrote, "Mom, Dad, Gregory, my wonderful family and friends..." etc., etc. I figured even if I sucked, maybe their spirits would be behind me, kicking my ass along a bit.

I stopped ot walk early on, and Brad and Brian, who'd been staying close to me, dusted me. I waved them on, not wanting to hold anyone back, and for most of the rest of the race, I ran alone. At one point Shannon ran by me as I was walking through a water stop. "You okay?" She called out, and I smiled and waved.

A couple of cool things about the Bolder Boulder. First of all, it's held on Memorial Day Monday and draws thousands of people from all over the country to this little mountain town to do this little 10k. It carries an infamy I was already familiar with, but only as a spectator. As a runner, I began to understand why people take weekends off and haul to Boulder for the race. For one, the spectators are awesome. Everything from Blues Brothers and Elvis impersonators to really, really bad garage bands to full-scale sound systems booming good vibrations and tinny boomboxes playing scratchy eighties music accompanies your run. At several points you'll come across belly dancers, hippie squads flashing peace signs, students armed with massive squirt guns hosing hot runners down and then your run-of-the-mill spectators: families, neighbors in bath robes, elderly couples waving and smiling, enthusiastic people of every age, race, occupation and athletic capability rooting you on loudly. All along the route people call out your number, random well-wishers encouraging you forward. I don't remember whether or not I smiled a lot during my cross-country races, but I know that if I did, my determined, gritted-teeth grin came nowhere near the heartfelt, one-thousand-watt, loose, cheerful smile plastered across my face for the duration of this 10k. I slapped five with at least twenty different people, from the Dan Aykroyd impersonator to a five year old little girl who jumped excitedly out at me, her hands outstretched.

Another cool thing is the run into the stadium. You finish your run feeling like an Olympic athlete. Just the buzz in the stadium created by the people in the stands waiting for their runner and/or finished runners chatting or sheering others on creates an enormous excitement and doing that half-lap around the inside of Folsom, it feels like everyone is cheering for you. No matter how beat you are, you have to run at that point.

Fellow runners are great forms of encouragement, especially when they don't know it. At one point a man ran by me and tapped me on the back. "I like your bib," he said, tapping the "in honor of" bib pinned to the back of my shirt. I have no idea who that guy was, I don't even remember what he looks like, but he gave me a second or, by that time, perhaps fourth or fifth, wind.

Meeting up with friends afterwards, comparing times (especially when you start in the wrong wave like most of us did) and goody bags, talking about the race and sharing our own little moments of it, and, this time, getting the bag Gregory packed with all of our stuff in it and tugging our warm-ups on over our shorts and chilly thighs, are all fun moments. I almost missed my favorite postrace moment, though.

My mom and I spoke the night before and while she'd been saying she wanted to come in for it, she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to make th ehourlong drive down, find parking, and get to the stadium in time. Life's been stressful for her lately, and she had company in town, an old family friend from Jersey who I didn't even really remember, who would have to come along as well. When I hung up with her, I was pretty sure she wasn't going to be there and, consequently, I kind of forgot to look for her, especially once I found my friends.

Fortunately my boyfriend is more conscientious than I am. As I was busy chatting with our friends, I looked down and over a section to see him chatting with a couple of strange women. One of them began dialing something on his cell phone, and suddenly my phone began to ring. As I picked it up and heard her voice over the line, I saw the woman using his phone turn slightly towards me. Mom had made it after all, and Gregory was keeping her--and her long-distance friend--company while they tried to locate me. I made my way through the stands to her, and she greeted me--despite my ignorance of her presence after she'd driven down in freezing weather at the crack of dawn to see me run, only to wait around an hour after my finish until I finally found her--with a big hug and congratulations. It was starting to feel a little more like the last time I raced, and even though my mom only stayed for a few minutes, the familiarity she brought to the day brought tears to my eyes as I walked back across campus to meet my friends and Gregory after walking Mom and her friend to their car. My legs were sore and shaky, I was a little dehydrated and I really just wanted to stretch well and sit down for awhile. I felt exhilarated and exhausted at the same time, but also happy and content. I'd done it. I'd finished, I'd run substantially more than I'd walked and I ran the stadium. My time was, at about an hour and a few minutes, a bit better than I originally thought it'd be, and I was now among the Boulderites who'd wear their Bolder Boulder shirts proudly about town. I happily set off across campus to meet my friends.

My euphoria came to a slightly halt, though, if only momentarily. While little could really change the way this race made me feel, and nothing could take the experience away, there was a little dark lining to this silver cloud. I hadn't beaten Gregory by any stretch of the imagination. Nobody in our group had, actually; he'd outpaced everyone and came in first of all of us, even Janelle, the serious marathoner among us. Next time I'll have to remind myself of a few things:
-Never ever ever bet your odds of winning are better than an Ironman triathlete's, unless you are one as well.
-Train better, not harder. Training too hard sidelined me for a week with a nasty strain to my left foot and swollen knees due to poorly-stretched ITB muscles (I am STILL paying for this one). While I'm not sure that week would've necessarily helped, it woulddn't have hurt, and as it is, he only beat me by about ten minutes or so.
-Never ever ever gamble with the French. Look at Vietnam.
-If you're going to make such a gamble, make sure you don't mind the consequences too much. In my case I didn't. Neither did he.