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 them 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, all gross, and wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and wasting my day away. Running helps me. Being outside helps me. It’s a way out. 

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 we started and ended on, 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, to feel light, 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 promised myself I’d swear off after 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 the ground will never change.