800

In high school, I was a pretty good athlete. I played sports essentially year-round, and each year for the physical fitness test in PE, I ran a decent mile time. 

Beyond athletics, I also loved music, and art, and writing. As early as third or fourth grade, I’d come home from practice and spend hours alone in my room making pencil drawings of my favorite athletes, like Don Mattingly and Bo Jackson. In sixth grade, I had a short story published. My parents cared, and my teacher did too. But no one else, really. I grew up in a small town in Alabama where sports was placed atop a massive pillar. A sign welcomed people into our town, noting “Population 657.” Four hundred of these gathered at the Baptist church every Sunday morning, and somehow thousands showed up at the football stadium every Friday night. We had a small, underfunded band, and no choir, no art, no drama classes. So I played sports, partly because I liked them. But mostly, if I’m honest, I played out of compulsion. In our town, if you could play, you played. Boys who didn’t weren’t just overlooked. They were looked down on.

My junior year, I chose not to run on the track team.

Late in the track season that year, I was at our county track meet, which was being held at our high school. I wasn’t there to compete, but to take photos for the yearbook, and I was dressed for the occasion. I had on a pink Duck Head polo shirt, khaki shorts, and a pair of Sebago boat shoes with the laces in barrel knots. No socks, of course. It was a pretty standard outfit for a teenage boy in Alabama at the time. With my camera slung around my neck, I was doing my job when someone sent by the track coach approached me with a message. Our team was within reach of winning the title, and he needed somebody with a fighting chance to run the 800.

The 800-meter run is a particularly unpleasant race. It’s two laps around the track, which might not sound like much, until you try to run both laps as fast as you possibly can. It’s too long to sprint, and too short for a long-distance pace. By the end, your lungs are burning, your legs are screaming, and you’re questioning some of your life decisions. I was about to make one of those decisions. I had stepped off the pillar, and now somebody was asking me to climb back up. With considerable ambivalence, and after some prodding, I agreed to run.

Of course, I couldn’t run in boat shoes and pink Duck Head…our colors were blue and gold. So I swapped my polo for a jersey and borrowed a pair of running shoes from a friend. They were about one size too big. I borrowed his socks, too. I handed off my camera, and within a matter of minutes, instead of shooting the race, I was standing at the starting line. I hadn’t trained with the team, and I hadn’t practiced for the 800. But in the back of my mind, I thought I might have a chance. Maybe a bit of unfounded teenage confidence.

When the gun went off, the other runners went out faster than I expected. I knew I needed to pace myself, but I also knew I couldn’t afford to lose contact with the pack. So I ran faster than I wanted to, and even then, I was only in about sixth place. By the time we finished the first lap, I was about ten meters behind the pack. I was already hurting, and I still had another lap to go. This was not going well. But I noticed that a few of the runners ahead of me were beginning to fade. I wasn’t feeling especially wonderful, but by the 500-meter mark, I passed two runners and moved into fourth place. Down the back stretch, I passed two more into second, and I was within reach of the leader.

With about a hundred meters to go, I was absolutely exhausted. My lungs were on fire, my legs were heavy as logs, and every part of my body was telling me that I was done. But I was about a meter behind the leader, and he knew it. He started pushing harder, determined to stay in front of me. We were both sprinting, and with fifty meters to go, we were side by side, me on his outside. We were both laboring, but neither of us was willing to relent, and as we approached the finish line, the race could have gone either way. But in those final strides, I edged him out. I crossed first.

Because the meet was at our home track, when I won, the crowd erupted. People were screaming and cheering, and it was incredible. I wish I could tell you that I raised my arms in triumph, took a victory lap, and celebrated with my…teammates? But I didn’t. I collapsed right there on the track. I had absolutely nothing left, and it took a lot of effort and some strong encouragement to walk off a couple of minutes later so the next race could begin. A few races later, the meet was over and the title was ours. 

Winning felt good. It did. But as I was lying there on the track, listening to that crowd, though I couldn’t articulate it at the time, I knew they were celebrating a version of me that I wouldn’t always choose myself. I’d drawn portraits and written stories for years, and almost nobody noticed. I ran two laps in borrowed shoes, and the whole town stood up.

I had shown up that afternoon to take photos of runners, and somehow, I’d become one of the runners myself. So I don’t have any pictures of the race. The photographer was busy. But I do have the blue ribbon. Recently, I picked up a book from my shelf, and it fell out.