Hills

I’m a big fan of being late to cross-country practice.

And you’d think that, eventually, I’d get some sort of reprimand

for never being on time, but that has never really happened, save for

the occasional disapproving word before starting the workout. So I

continue being late, and I continue dodging any serious punishment.

It’s a permanent fixture in my routine by now: I go to school, I

sit through class, I eat lunch, I talk to my friends, and then I arrive,

unchanged and 10 minutes late, to the track. This is not to say I’m not

able to arrive on time; usually, my friend Louisa and I are bright and

ready and sitting in her car way before 3:45. We just neglect getting out

of the car until about 3:50, maybe, on a good day.

It’s not like I don’t try during practice. My reluctance to get there at

a reasonable time does not equate to a reluctance to go to practice at

all. My lateness only lets me skip warm-up drills, (which I usually slack

on anyway, to be honest). I’ll still do the 15-minute warm-up jog, and

the workout—maybe not the cooldown—but the workout is what really

counts!

And while I may be a big fan of being late to cross-country practice,

I am not a big fan of skipping it anymore. Not like last year—my first

season ever—when I skipped, like, every Friday, without fail, and the

thought of running over weekends and breaks appalled me. I don’t even know what changed over the past year that made me

break my skipping habit. I don’t feel any more dedicated to the sport

than I was last year. I watch my teammates grit their way through

every hard workout, and stumble over finish lines during races, and

methodically go to weightroom and do cooldown every day, and I

know that I am not like them. The closest I’ll ever get to that level of

determination is when I am watching from the turf.

As much as I like going on easy runs, and as much as I enjoy the

reassurance of being on a team, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to

understand the seemingly unwavering devotion they have.

Sometimes, after pretending to need to catch a 5:15 bus in order to

skip cooldown, I’ll sit on the carpeted floor of my friend’s bedroom, and

pose a question to her, over the same watered-down Dunkin coffees we

always get after cross country.

I’ll ask her if I should quit, and she’ll respond the same way she

always does, with a noncommittal shrug and quip about her own hatred

for the sport, and I’ll toy with the appeal of never having to stand at a

starting line ever again. But I don’t think I’ll ever quit cross country, or

track, until they come to their natural close at the end of senior year.

I’ll pose this question to anybody who’ll listen over and over again,

and I’ll complain about track over and over again, and my heart will

pound erratically as the thick silence of a cross-country start line

overwhelms me over, and over, and over again—but, in spite of all of

this, I never quit.

Do I really like cross-country, deep down? And track? Is that why I

never quit? I like running—I know that much for sure, because that’s

the only reason I keep showing up to practice at all. I think I’ll always

like running, even when I say I hate it after a run where the only thing

I wanted was to stop, because running is good for me. It gives me

something to do, on days where I would’ve previously done nothing at

all but stay inside, alone, in my room, all gross, and wearing the same

clothes as yesterday, and wasting my day away wallowing in my own

misery.

I like running. But doing cross country and track, with all their

treacherous 800 repeats and hill sprints and nerve-wracking races, is

not the same as going on regular, casual, easy runs. I could quit cross

country and still go on runs. But I don’t. I stay on the cross-country

team, and I continue showing up 15 minutes late to every practice.

So, instead of quitting, I ended up going to our league’s

championship meet. We had two, actually: one somewhere in

Connecticut, in which I got 13th and a flimsy medal, and one in Van

Cortlandt Park, an exceptionally hilly course on which I had no chance

to place in the top 20 or get a new personal record—maybe top 50, if

I was lucky. So I was a bit miffed about going to that second one-–but I had already skipped it the prior year, and I didn’t have an excuse to

not go.

The race was on a Monday. We got to leave school at 12:30, which

might’ve been the best part of the day, because I got to miss a full

period of Spanish! Despite my occasional hatred of the sport, there

were still good things that came out of cross country. It was a short

bus ride compared to our other meets—only about 20 minutes. I sat

with my teammate, Helen, and watched as she diligently stalked her

competition on athletic.net while I talked to my other teammate, Luna,

about how her American Studies class was going.

We approached the park, and I watched from the window while the

bus driver maneuvered around the crowded street to drop us off. Other

teams milled by in their respective uniform as two boys hefted the

water jug out the back door of the bus.

We dropped our stuff on some wooden bleachers near the finish

line. I was quick to abandon my heavy backpack. I looked down at the

people setting up the clock and the banners at the finish line. A bit

scary, I thought, and I grimaced as my teammates finished putting their

stuff down.

I have spent a lot of time in Van Cortlandt Park, so I knew exactly

what this course entailed despite never having raced it before. The

hills were basically 90 degrees, there were many stray roots poking

out of the ground—a perfect trap to trip on mid-race—and almost the

entire course was empty of people except for the other runners. Besides

the field, there were a couple of places where people gathered in the

woods to cheer the runners: a bridge almost a third of the way into

the race and a random road that intersected the woods a little more

than halfway through the second mile. Both places would be littered

with parents cheering on their kids and screaming out mile splits,

coaches, random people trying to walk through, and a multitude of

photographers. I tried not to imagine the horrendous pictures that

might be taken of me mid race, forever saved in the background of

some other team’s Instagram.

I turned my attention back to the coaches, who were detailing what

we needed to do for warmup: “Yeah, we’re gonna want to do, like, a ten

minute jog, drills, two pickups, then some strides.” I quickly turned my

focus to my phone instead and took the opportunity to text my friends

before the race started. We had about 40 minutes until the gun would

go off.

Helen poked me to get my attention, and I followed her down the

bleachers as she led the five members of the girls’ team in a slow jog.

“So. I’m trying to beat this girl I know from my running camp. I think

I have a good chance of getting top 30, hopefully,” she said, continuing

to tell us about all the girls she wanted to beat. Our conversation turned to complaining about how many hills we would be running up, and I

began to rack my brain for a way to get out of this. Nothing came to

mind, and even if I were to create the perfect excuse, would I even

take the opportunity? As much as I detested this course, I liked my

team enough that I felt guilty about even conspiring to abandon them.

I mulled that thought over in my head. Was that why I never quit?

Because I felt—what? Guilty, about leaving them? Or was it just because

I enjoyed spending time with them? That much was true, definitely,

because the only times I’ve truly without-a-doubt hated cross country

with all my heart were the few days I had to do workouts alone. Maybe

I didn’t have any unwavering, heart-felt devotion to the sport itself, but

I did to laughing with my teammates and hiding in the bathroom with

them during drills.

We finished our jog back where we started. I put my phone down and

half-heartedly did a couple of drills (probably with very, very bad form)

and joined my teammates as they went to do strides. We were supposed

to do three. I did two. One of the coaches told us to do our last stride

down to the starting line, and Helen was quick to nod and immediately

jump into action. I watched her and the purple ribbons in her hair

as her feet carried her to the chalk-drawn starting line. Stella and Jia

followed her lead after a few seconds. Luna was getting water, still far

behind, but I knew she’d catch up soon. I glanced back at the coaches,

who had never once gotten mad at me for being late, and strode away.

An angry-looking woman pointed us to where we would be starting

once I joined my teammates at the line. Luna still wasn’t there, but the

coaches had somehow managed to appear behind us only a few seconds

after I had stridden down.

Helen seemed to be as locked in as always. She had on neon pink

spikes and her ribbons were tied tightly into her hair. She was distinctly

lacking in purple glitter, I realized, as I watched another team walk by

practically soaked head-to-toe in blue glitter. Luna arrived, and the

coaches immediately jumped into a speech about how “every point

mattered,” and how we needed “to put our all” into this race. I was

quick to tune them out. They finished off and let us do our five-person

team huddle. My arms were on Stella and Luna’s shoulders. I was

almost face-to-face with Jia. We reassured each other. I distantly heard

myself telling them they were going to do great, that it would all be

over in less than 30 minutes. The team next to us did some stupidly

elaborate team cheer. Helen snapped her head over to me, and told me

I should be the one doing ours, since it was my last cross-country race

ever. Stella nodded along almost instantly, laughing and immediately

agreeing. I cringed, silently ransacking my brain to remember the

words. “Maybe we should do it together! I think it’s a good idea, y’know...

as a team...” I offered, trying to reason with them. I heard the coaches

laughing to my right. I convinced Luna to do it with me, in the end.

We had a little over a minute left until we raced. Everyone got in

position. In the tightly packed start line, Helen and I were at the front. I

smiled at her, and we wished each other luck. Stella, Jia, and Luna were

right behind us. The official yelled from the side, explaining the rules

of the race, and I curled my sweaty hands into fists and began wishing

I was anywhere else but here. I told myself I should’ve quit when I had

the chance, but I knew that in 22 minutes I would be done, running

cooldown with my teammates, waiting for the boys’ race to finish, and

filled with the giddy pride of a new PR.

Is that why I run? To feel accomplished when the hard part is over?

It’s not a bad reason, I don’t think, but is it the only reason? I have

never really known how to feel about running, and I’m starting to think

I’ll never know. I’ve gone on runs in every sort of weather. I’ve gone

on morning runs and night runs, and I’ve run through every emotion,

good or bad. I’ve run until the world went hazy at the edges and I’ve

run just to feel the tug of aching hunger afterwards. I’ve run to feel

empty, and I’ve run just to feel anything at all. I’ve run to feel less

angry, to feel less of everything, and I’ve run just to get out of my house

and be alone, deep in the woods where nobody can see me. I’ve run

to punish myself, in place of another, more permanent way, so maybe

running has not always been good for me. Maybe it is dangerous to

use it as a way to replace something that I swore off in middle school,

but running has also made me feel so free, in a way I cannot find

anywhere else. Sometimes I leave practice happier than when I came in,

and sometimes I laugh so hard with my teammates that my ribs ache

and my sides feel sore for hours after. I’ve felt terrible while running,

but I’ve felt the most sure of myself I’ve ever been while running too,

because I know that even if everything else in the world is unstable, the

sound of my feet pounding against dirt will never change.