Last Friday’s Results

Last Friday saw our first outdoor meet of the season. It was the perfect weather for a distance race, cloudy and just a little chilly. Not cold enough to freeze muscles, but enough to keep from dehydrating athletes entirely.

I raced the 3k (since there wasn’t any 5k). It wasn’t a PR, but I was pretty pleased with my performance; I didn’t even notice the numbness in my leg until the race ended. It would appear as though I’m finally race-ready again.

Also, I had some unusual support. The meet was close enough to home that my lovely girlfriend dropped by to cheer me on. She brought her digital camera, too, which means that you lucky people get to witness a master in action:

Sorry for the blurriness. I wish I could say that I was just moving too fast, but alas, such was not the case.

In spite of the blurriness, it does show an impressive feat. There were 25 other people on the track for that race, and yet I managed to spend most of it alone. Story of my racing career.

Anyway, here’s a second picture. This one’s a little sharper:

This was caught at an unfortunate time– It looks like I’m a really intense power walker. Like the cockscomb I’ve got going on top of my head?

Bethlehem’s Canal

It’s an unpleasant time of year for Bethlehem’s canal. The water level sometimes falls until it’s a mere trickle of a stream, sitting still and turning deeper shades of brown. Geese, the undisputed rulers of the canal, sit imperiously in this trickle of water as they further congest it with their crap. Mosquitoes and gnats breed in the stagnant pools and wait for runners to come along.

I was running alongside this cesspool last night, ignoring the unseasonal clouds of insects. As has become my Modus Operandi, I was thinking about my legs. Although my injury has been getting better, my right leg still goes numb beneath the knee. Or, at least numb enough to decrease my awareness of where my right foot is.

My running partner did, however, break my concentration to show me the canal’s most recent treasure: a small deer, flipped on its back with its bare, mold-covered ribs exposed to the elements. Near it sat a Little Caesar’s pizza box, half-mired in the muck.

Further down the path, my concentration broke again. There was a couple standing to one side of the path, deep in conversation, probably admiring what passes for nature. With them were their two rottweilers.

Now, I love dogs. Even rotties don’t usually bother me. But as we passed by, one of the dogs darted toward us, jerking the woman’s limp hand away from her body. I prepared myself to grab its collar in case it did get away from her, but it didn’t seem interested in coming any closer.

In this moment, though, I had taken my concentration off of my right leg. As fate would have it, there was a stone half-buried at that point in the path. I wasn’t lifting my right foot high enough to clear it.

Seems like an unnecessarily long lead up to a simple fall, right? Well, as I was rolling across the dirt, toward the canal, a horrible picture filled my mind’s eye. It was the deer carcass, rent open by the spawning insects. The pollution and fishhooks that filled the muck of the canal. I wasn’t thinking quite so clearly, of course, but all of the detestable contents of the muddy riverbed came to me in a single flash of vague horror.

“Fu-OHK!” I cried, trying to vocalize my apprehensions. By this point, my body had stopped rolling, and I lay sprawled on the lip of the canal. My teammate had stopped running and watched me with big eyes, trying to hold in his laughter. Even the couple had stopped, staring with what seemed to be indignation at my muffled curse. The dogs panted serenely, blameless.

I am, of course, fine. I just need to be a little more aware of my footing. I can’t wait for this numbness to heal itself.

Fair

My head coach, W, called for a meeting yesterday. He had heard the word “unfair” being thrown around a lot by the team, and he was getting sick of it.

So we filed into the dungeonous underbelly of our track-and-field house to anticipate his tirade. He began by asking if anyone on the team was an English Major. I raised my hand. “Tim,” he said, “will you please tell us all what this word means?” He wrote out F-A-I-R on our little chalkboard.

“It means giving everyone an equal opportunity at what they want.” I had said it before I thought about it, but I rolled it around in my head a bit and nodded. It seemed like a satisfactory definition.

Coach W loved it. Turns out it was exactly the definition he was looking for. What he had brought us together to say was that, being able students at a fairly expensive school, we had already been given many opportunities in life. Those who were born without opportunity– those in disadvantaged neighborhoods, those born with terminal illnesses, those born without all of their faculties– are the only ones with the right to talk about what’s unfair.

My teammates and I are indeed privileged. That can’t be said enough. And it’s easy in an insulated white suburb (because Bethlehem is really more suburb than city) to lose perspective on just how bad life can be.

Coach W did a good job of explaining such a pertinent point. But there was a dangerous thread of logic in his argument: he said that we can’t say something’s unfair as long as someone in this world lives a worse life than ours. Essentially, we can’t complain when he does treat us unfairly.

It reminded me of all the times as a child when I perceived unequal treatment amongst my brothers. “That’s not fair,” I would say. My parents liked to use the classic “Life’s not fair” response. But that doesn’t excuse treating people equally. The fact that life isn’t fair should be incentive to try and make it as fair to as many people as you can. Starting with your children, your neighbors, your team.

And that is why, if I end up being a coach, I won’t try to silence my team by making them feel guilty for the advantages that they were given by God/Luck/Fate. I will merely perform my duty to them, part of which is to make sure they’re treated equally.