The Spring Thaw 5K

The Spring Thaw 5K

It was Parent’s Weekend for student athletic trainers at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. This was our daughter Alicia’s first year in the program. She’d emailed me a registration for the first annual Spring Thaw 5K, which was to be the focus of their fund raising. Of course my wife and I were happy to register and make the four-hour drive, even though we weren’t runners, at least not anymore. Five kilometers is barely three miles, nothing more than I occasionally walked on my lunch hours last fall before the snow flew. An hour’s stroll through the Schmeeckle Reserve. I hadn’t been walking since then, and I’d really been looking forward to this. I also needed to stifle my body’s constant pleading for movement. Standing up, I didn’t much like the obstructed view I had of my trusty Reeboks. Something had to be done.

When we arrived at the track where the racers were assembling, the clouds were starting to thin after a day of rain. Race numbers hung from bodies of different shapes, sizes and ages. Lithe young men strutted and stretched. Children ran and tumbled in the wet grass. Older men and women, some older than we were, laughed and joked. An elderly woman with a number and a cane held the hand of her young grandson. We weren't the only ones who had donned racing jeans for the occasion. We saw our daughter crossing the infield with two of her friends. She waved discreetly.

We had thoughtfully pinned the numbers on the backs of our windbreakers, and a couple about our age asked where we’d gotten them. We said they were in the green bags handed out at registration. They looked at each other and laughed, having left their bags in the car. Like it mattered. Some of us joked that we planned to start in the back so as not to be trampled by those actually running the race. Then our daughter came to tell us our numbers were supposed to be pinned on the front. That figured. I’d already pinned and re-pinned it twice to the back of my windbreaker; and so it came out to the front of the gray UW-SP T-shirt Alicia had given me for Christmas, right under “Dawgs”, and the windbreaker quickly came off amid a glint of real sunshine.

They herded about one hundred and eighty of us out onto the middle of Reserve Street and we did indeed edge our way toward the rear. Back at the La Quinta I’d pulled an old Ace bandage over my knee. Was it tighter than it used to be? I didn’t usually wear it for a walk, but the knee had gotten looser over time, and I wasn’t taking any chances. There was too much golf to be played.

A sharp crack pierced the air and like bison we began to move. In seconds young men of steel were loping across Maria Drive a good block ahead of us and disappearing into the Schmeeckle Reserve. I am no power walker, but normally I needed to slow my pace to walk with my wife. I expected we’d come in well over an hour. But this morning her competitive nature had suddenly kicked in, and now it was I who struggled to keep up with her long, determined strides. This would not be one of our usual strolls through the Chequamegon Forest.

A woman and her young son of maybe seven worked their way around us. She was overweight. Although there were others still farther behind, I wasn’t sure I liked being passed by this pair. The kid was talking and singing nonsense constantly. I tried not to let it bother me, yet it seemed to silence the rich, whistling calls of cardinals, which I had been enjoying, never hearing these birds back home. Yada yada, hummedy-humm. This kid was in love with the sound of his own voice, but I was not. We were in the woods now, the kind of place in which I was accustomed to only the sounds of nature. Letting this kid disturb my peace of mind was to ignore the advice of countless sages from Lao Tzu to Eckhart Tolle, the timeless counsels of acceptance and non-resistance to what is. They were right, of course, but being right wasn’t always being real. The kid stopped to tie his shoe, and we went by, leaving the noise behind for the moment.

The forest was clad in grays and browns, except for the green of a few stands of white pine. The ground lay hidden beneath a carpet of twigs and old brown leaves, mostly the sharp-edged leavings of white oak. On our property back home, we had a few lonely red oak but not nearly enough to suit me. Their acorns were few and vulnerable compared to the helicoptered multitudes shed by the maples. Instead of majestic white pine, we had humble balsam. Our forest floor was also littered with fallen aspen, which most people our way called popple, and tangles of brush. Breaking trail was not easy work.

Our path in Schmeeckle was wide and firm yet puddled enough we had to watch our step. Shit! I said aloud, then looked about for anyone within earshot. My war against four-letter words had been going about as well as the war on terrorism. I’d forgotten my pedometer.

Then I wondered, what was so important about that pedometer anyway? Would I not be walking the same number of steps whether I had it or not? Why did I need to number them? Did it matter that I may have taken more steps in one day and less in another? If I set some kind of a world walking record, would it really make the world a better place?

We humans were always numbering and measuring and timing. We were always comparing ourselves or seeking our limits. Out in northern California a man had been surfing every day for thirty-two years. He’d broken the Guinness world record long ago. Even though he’d stopped the official count almost four years ago, he still went every day. What for? (See "Dale Webster's Endless Summer" at SI.com). Somewhere far ahead of us lungs labored and muscles strained to propel one body across a finish line ahead of others. Wasn’t the competitive part of this race simply an exercise in our estrangement from one another? A way of distinguishing the swift from the slow, the strong from the weak? So even when our enemies were not in hot pursuit, we knew just who should be culled from the herd and whose genes should carry on.

Thomas Merton once compared the human race to a body of broken bones. He likened the reuniting of mankind to the pain of resetting these bones.[i] Separation was the easy path on which to run. We crossed Michigan Avenue where a couple of the students in orange vests were directing traffic. Alicia said she would be directing traffic, but I was glad she wasn’t one of those chosen to herd metal here.

Of course winning and losing weren't important, but the truth ran even deeper than that. I’d had a vision of myself waiting at the finish line, waving the remaining few stragglers on by so I could finish last. But even that would have been a way of distinguishing myself, of setting myself apart from the rest. A hollow victory for anyone I let pass. Sooner or later someone would have asked that I go ahead, and in the spirit of healing broken bones, I would have had no choice. I wanted to be a healer.

The boy’s chattering voice was coming closer: they were gaining on us again. We could have let them pass. I should have been what-is'ing the hell out of this. But suddenly I didn’t want to lose to an overweight mother and a seven-year old, not voluntarily. I wasn’t ready to be culled, not just yet. Sometimes the urge to preserve our fragile sense of individuality was overwhelming. Besides, beating this pair would be no great sin.

The sound of our shoes grinding limestone quickened. Yes, those were oak leaves on the forest floor, but I was missing so much of the natural beauty. We’d have to come back again someday when we could actually pause to enjoy it. Somewhere close ahead a shrill honking broke from the trees. We looked about but saw nothing. The path gave way to cedar boarding. An old woman in a chair sat in the way of a wrong turn. Gray hair fell about her shoulders. She smiled as we turned and passed out over a bog. The honking came again and we saw a pair of cranes floating over the reeds, gaining altitude. The boards thumped hollow beneath our feet, and still that high voice babbled close behind. The walking had bothered my knee at first, but it had begun to feel better. My whole body was feeling better.

In low places along the way we often had to step carefully off the path and around standing water, lest it fill our shoes. Black mud speckled their whiteness. Then we came to a place where the water and mud could not be easily stepped around, so we followed a mother and daughter through the brush on a torturous search for the driest route. They were two of the people we had joked with before the race about starting in the rear. I think they took the only reasonable path that did not require a complete detour. They’d been far ahead of us, but now we’d caught them. They too had pounds to shed. I thought they might be tiring. Had obesity become an American way of life? I wondered. Had I become part of it?

Another of the students, a well-hewn redheaded kid, rolled past us on a mountain bike. Mud striped the back of his T-shirt. Later that day he would be patching electrodes to my back, which would relieve the pain and stiffness. We all laughed as we came to a pool of water and mud around which there was no good way. “My advice,” he said as he rolled right through the middle on his bike, “is to just go right through it.” The mother tiptoed through it right behind him, but the daughter, to her mud-sucking sorrow, tried to find a better way. My wife and I took the wiser path, and my shoes shipped remarkably little water.

As the path ambled through drier terrain, mother and daughter once again put distance between us. If they were tired, they were not as tired as we were. We could have kept up, but that truly was not the reason we had come. And there was a yawning silence behind us. Where had they all gone, the babbling boy, his mother and the others? There was no one left to push us, no one to whom we did not wish to lose.

We rounded Lake Joanis where geese were paddling and ducks went tail-up feeding off the bottom. There was dampness in my shoes, but once again I felt grateful the still-gray sky was sparing us. Another twist in the trail and there sat Alicia, guarding against another wrong turn. Next to her on the bench sat a small satchel of first aid supplies, wrapping tape and such. She smiled to see us. The kid was blooming right before our eyes. “Go left when you get to the sidewalk,” she said. “OK,” we said. Another hundred feet or so and we were back on Michigan Avenue.

The sudden shock of pavement awoke the pain in my knee. Three point one miles would be plenty this day. As we walked down Maria Drive I told my wife some of the top runners had probably finished well under twenty minutes. We passed some of those who had already finished, two blocks from the track. One of these men, a tall fellow of about thirty, turned out to be the overall winner, finishing somewhere in the eighteens.

Three students were stopping traffic on Maria for those ending the race. “What, you don’t carry us across?” I joked. Across the street, we walked the length of the track on the sidewalk along the fence. When we got to the entrance, all I could think of was voiding motel coffee in one of the green porta-potties. I ducked under the flagline and looked back to my wife walking up the track. Whoa, wait, I remembered, the course finished with a three-quarter lap around the track. I caught up with my wife on the comfortable, rubberized surface. My wife ventured it might have been made of waste tires. Made sense, I agreed. “We’re gearing up for the final kick,” I said to a couple of girls overseeing the finish.

As we hit the straightaway we saw the luminescent green numerals of the official clock marking time: 59:35, 59:36…. As our walks go, we had made excellent time. If we ran, we could make it. “Hey,” I said to my wife, “we could finish this in under an hour. Come on.”

59:40, 59:41….

“Go on,” she said.

I broke into a run. I didn’t need a full sprint, and I wasn’t about to blow a hammy, but it felt good. There was still plenty of kick left in the old legs. I might have looked like an old plow horse, but just then I felt all thoroughbred.

59:52, 59:53….

I guess I finished in about 59:54. There would be no number one in front of my time. But once again, wasn’t I really focusing on a meaningless measurement? Maybe, and yet when I had looked at my wife, she understood. Maybe the nobler thing for me would have been to say no, let’s finish together, but I am not so sure about that either. She might not have wanted me to. It was such a small victory, but even the smallest victory can be a selfish, self-aggrandizing thing; or it can be a humbling experience in which others are allowed to share. Sometimes it can be both. I think my finish was something she trusted we could share. Not just my victory but our victory…as it truly was.

Racers strolled about the grassy infield. The student and faculty organizers had provided us with Gatorade, bagel pieces and fruit at the finish, and we partook as the final participants wandered in. The mother and her chatterbox son arrived, although he was quiet now. I suspected they had stopped again somewhere, perhaps for disciplinary reasons. A victory can take many forms. A few minutes later came the old woman with her grandson, still stoking her cane. I guessed her age at about seventy, and she was not light either. Had comparisons held any more relevance, temporal or otherwise, our small victory paled next to hers. I hoped her young grandson would remember this walk with his grandma, would remember her victory long enough to share it with his grandson.

And so our race was over, and my feet and back were stiffening. That wouldn’t happen so readily the next time, I reasoned. But I was glad we had come, glad we had “raced.” I felt better knowing we lived in a world where old women with canes finished races and where a man can surf every day for almost a third of a century. I hoped they didn't mind if I shared a little in their accomplishments. We might not always know why we do what we do, but if it means something to someone, to anyone anywhere, that is reason enough.

As my wife collected our plates and empty Gatorade cups, my cell phone tinkled with a text from Alicia that she would be meeting us later for lunch. After that, she would give us a tour of the athletic training facilities. It was time to leave. In passing through the front gate, I sought for something St. Paul had written once, something about not running the race in vain or working to no purpose.[ii] Surely, he had not. Nor did any of us who ran or walked or swam or surfed or read or prayed in answer to that primal gathering call that would someday bring us all home again.

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[i] “A Body of Broken Bones,” New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton, 1961.

[ii] “Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world, as you hold on to the word of life, so that my boast for the day of Christ may be that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. But, even if I am poured out as a libation upon the sacrificial service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with all of you. In the same way you also should rejoice and share your joy with me.” 2 Philippians 14-18, trans New American Bible.