Races Within Races

Someone -- maybe it was my dad -- used to tell me that the great thing about baseball was that every time you watched a game you would see something that you had never seen before. For instance, I took my kids to a game this summer and we saw a batter hit a line drive up the middle that struck the second-base bag and bounced straight up into the air. In all the hundreds of games I've watched, I have never seen that happen before!

Baseball dazzles us with complexity; basketball and football with specialized feats of strength and speed; golf, tennis with unmatched skill. But distance running doesn't really dazzle us at all. At least, it seems to me that "dazzle" isn't the right word to describe an impressive run. "Awesome" comes closer.

Anyway, at the Norwood meet, I thought about the pleasures of watching cross-country races, and one of the things that struck me -- maybe a faint echo of the richness of watching a baseball game -- is that every race is actually many races happening in the same space and more or less the same time. Every runner in the race adds texture and drama to the whole, and if you don't watch carefully, you'll miss the races within the race.

For example, on Tuesday, the girls race was "over" almost as soon as it started -- that is, if by "over" we mean that we knew who was going to win and by how much. At the front of the race, the top Newton girls did what their training and fitness allowed them to do: they ran at a fairly easy pace and finished well in front of the first Norwood girl. They were, as the Norwood Coach admitted later, "in another class." But back in the pack, extraordinary things were happening. To name only a few, several runners (on both teams) ran faster for 5K than they had ever run in their lives; one Newton girl ran three minutes faster than she had ever run before (three minutes at that pace is a third of a mile!); another girl accelerated in the middle of the race and caught numerous runners in front of her, finishing with a long sprint to catch one more right at the finish line. Overall, some runners improved, some did not. Some ran to their limits, others ran conservatively. Some ran in groups, drawing strength from companionship, others set off bravely on their own with varying degrees of success. Two runners finished their first full races of the year. Two others were forced to be on the sidelines with injuries, but cheered both Newton and Norwood runners with great enthusiasm.

In every race, it seems, there are opportunities to show courage, commitment, sportsmanship, or to let those opportunities pass by. Regardless of the final time and final score, there are victories to be earned all over the place.

I don't mean to sound too sappy about this. I always hate it when I hear people say "every one who finishes is a winner." That's not how I see it. True, sometimes it takes everything you have to finish a race, but most of the time the point is not just to finish, but to compete to the utmost of your ability. It's all-too-common to finish a race without having done that. It's nothing to celebrate about.

Here's another thought: sometimes the hardest thing is to start the race. Sometimes it takes all your courage just to get to the line because you're hurt or sick or scared, or you know that the other runner or the other team is better and you are going to lose.

Ron Clarke, the great Australian distance runner and holder of numerous world records was asked whether he was disappointed never to have won an Olympic medal of any kind. He replied that not winning a medal was not a tragedy. A true tragedy was when a young runner was led to believe that winning was the only thing that mattered, and gave up the sport when it became clear that winning wasn't guaranteed.

Running. Risking. Learning. Improving. It happens every race, often out of sight of the finish line. The race of the day might belong to the slowest runner, or the fastest, or someone in the middle of the pack. All I know is that when runners gather and compete, no race is ever boring.