Hills
By: Rosa Jorge
By: Rosa Jorge
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.