Ran 3.5 miles on the hills of Baraboo at 7:30 pace on a cool night at sundown 68F. Put in some hills in preparation for meets coming up at Holy Name and Richland Center. Chest cold still there, forces me to cough and hack while I run. The side stitch I got during Friday's workout still hurts. I ran by Charlie's grave ... will go back the night before conference. Got a letter of congratulations from Harry Haslanger, he says we can win conference. I'm going to suggest to coach that we do more hills.
30 years later:
I'm not even sure where to start with reflections on this one ...
Let's leave aside the various health concerns and complaints.
Running past Charlie Nelson's grave was such a deep experience for me, on so many levels. I was a teenager, coping with the normal things: awkwardness, hormones, acne, the conflict between wanting to stay a kid and wanting to be an adult, and facial hair. But I was also facing something else: mortality. We all deny the fact that we will die. Some argue that this is actually adaptive, that we'd accomplish little if we dwelled hourly on the futility and temporariness of it all. Why do anything if I'm only going to be gone forever? But some argue that the acknowledgement of death can actually be liberating and motivating. I may be destined to become dust, but until then look out because I'm not going to waste a minute of this precious thing called life. I'd like to think I'm in this latter group.
Facing Charlie's death wasn't just facing loss. It was facing the pointlessness of it all. A stupid car crash? What, maybe 3 or 4 seconds of lapsed attention ... and you die?! It was just unfathomable. One day planning to run together throughout the summer and to be side-by-side in races the following fall, then next day choosing what to wear to the funeral? This wasn't what was supposed to be. I found it all overwhelming.
Visiting his grave, DURING a run, helped me in a tiny way to connect to a meaning, even if it was meaning of my own making. I had to run, it was just in my blood, I couldn't help it ... but now I had to run for something more than myself. I had to run, in part, for Charlie. And for everyone else I'd ever lost. In my addled teenage brain, I chose to carry a torch for all of them, but mostly for Charlie, who should have been there with us.
It's hard to run when you are crying. Try it. But tears are natural, when you miss someone, so tears came. Under a darkling sky, alone, running slowly through a cemetary on a Baraboo hill ... but lifted slightly by adrenaline and by a sense of being attached to something more than myself.
... after writing that, I feel relatively little motivation to write about the note that Harry Haslanger sent (see scan below). But in the spirit of reflecting back, I will say that it both a pleasant surprise and something that all of us felt really good about. Recognition from someone we respected. Confident tones of praise. It was another deposit into the emotional bank of our young and rather inexperienced team. It helped, a lot. And, of course, it provided us with a great nickname for Nellie!
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