Run, Forrest, run!
Mood:  not sure

Yesterday morning, while driving to work, I passed a school playground filled with happy children running laps.  My heart swelled with secret schadenfreude, and tormented memories:

1.  Running half-mile laps around a hoarfrost-encrusted playing field at 7:45 am.

2.  Our high school track coach, driving slowly behind the team in her beige "Le Car", loudly berating us with a megaphone.

3.  Ducking out of the practice run with my friend Sonja, savoring a hot fudge sundae at Friendly's, then nonchalantly rejoining the rest of the girls' track team as they straggled back from their far-flung odysseys.  (Mark Twight would have loved us.)

I didn't feel terribly guilty about the sundae transgressions, because my events were sprints and jumping.  Events that were over quickly, and required zero stamina.  We didn't even have a field coach.   Field people were regarded as minor freaks by our distance-running coach, who spent all her time out on the road, nurturing the milers.  We were simply sent off on our own to flounder across the long jump pit or break windows with the discus.  I spent a lot of time lying on the high jump mattress, watching the clouds go by.

Senior year, at our final track meet, the coach from a rival high school pulled me aside after observing my terrible high jump technique, and gave me some pointers.

Pointer #1: Jump over the bar, not through it.

Pointer #2:  Duh.

Pointer #3:  Try not to show up at track meets with hot fudge breath.

With her advice ringing in my head, and one jump left at 4'10", I curved through the approach and cleared the bar with inches to spare.  One by one, the other competitors dropped out.  Much to my shock, I ended up winning the event, with a personal record that would have qualified me for states (had they not already been held a week earlier).  Now that, I felt guilty about.  The other coach could have easily kept her mouth shut, allowed me to foul out, and gotten her team 10 points.  Instead, she opened my eyes to new possibilities.

Two days later, I graduated, and thus ended the track career.  But somewhere in all of this, there's a touching lesson about sportsmanship and laziness.

Such ruminations got me thinking: if Faramir can play forward for the Dom-Land Caribou, and pitch for the Atlanta Braves, why can't we put together a track team composed of David characters?

 100m dash:  Eddie Harnovey

   200m dash: John Francis "Spit" Spitieri

  High jump:  Carl

 

  Hurdles:  Sam Flynn

 

  Javelin:  Carl

 

  Javelin:  Dilios

  Pole vault:  Murray Whelan

  Long jump:  Jim Doyle

  Miniature shotput:  Murray Whelan