“We few, we happy few …”
7/24/2005
” … a good and kind feeling”
I want to say thanks to Peter for his comment (below) about my old Black Spike column. I was recently reunited with many of my former UNC athletes at a wedding in Richmond, Virginia. It made me recall what I would tell my recruits on their visits to Chapel Hill, “Look around. These guys, your future teammates, are going to be the men who are standing up with you on your wedding day.” And its true [it wasn't just a line I used]; a college cross-country team is a strange and wonderful thing, a family away from home during the most emotionally tumultuous years of your life. Think about it … for 4-5 years, you spend every single day together, running and eating and rooming together (in dorms or on the road), on bus rides, at banquets, in hotels, at meets, on spring break, on trails and tracks and weight rooms and bars [after the season's over, of course], in sickness and in health … well, you get the picture. The intentional family created through running is the single greatest thing about this sport. I can remember going out with the boys on my high school XC team to roll houses (they call it TP-ing up north) or driving 8 of my college teammates to the mountains in my grandfather’s old, dented, 1968 Delta 88 - that idled at 30mph - to train together over fall break. Just yesterday I ran on the “Cliffs of Insanity” with the local Trailheads running club who are fast becoming a family of men bonded by their common need to run and play outside - away from the stress of work and home-life and societal expectations. It is a strange and wonderful thing.
Dostoevsky said it so much better than I when he wrote in The Brother’s Karamozov:
“And even if we are occupied with important things, even if we attain honor or fall into misfortune - still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us … better, perhaps,
than we are.”
7/20/2005
The Boys of Summer
7/19/2005
What’s your favorite running book?
My favorite running book is one that was given to me to borrow [entrusted to me, I should say, because this treasure came nestled in a Ziplock bag] when I was on my mission to read about all the training systems in the world. I asked Bill Freeman, a coach and friend down in Buies Creek, NC (who - himself - had co-authored a book on Bill Bowerman and the Oregon training system) if he had any good running reads. Did he ever! He had a whole library of rare track & field biographies that he had collected before E-bay even existed. In one batch, he lent me Arthur Lydiard’s Running to the Top, an autobiography of Australian miler, Herb Elliott (don’t recall the title), and a little gem called,A Clean Pair of Heelswhich was the story of the New Zealand distance runner, Murray Halberg. I enjoyed all three, but it was Halberg that got to me. I wonder if anyone out there in the blog-osphere knows who he is? What I remember of the book is that Halberg had a withered arm (from a childhood rugby accident) but he didn’t let that stop him from becoming a gold medalist in the 5k or a world record holder. He was even knighted for his work with handicapped children after he retired. I think I may do a search right now on E-bay to find this book. If I do find it, I’ll keep it in a zip-locked bag in my own running library.
p.s. (more…)
