“Did you get good grades in college?” my daughter asked. “I don’t mean any offense, but here you are, this accomplished guy. You go to conferences in New York. You win awards. You have a good job. But you did these really dumb things like swam across marshes … in your running shoes … without a phone … without a coach … with a guy who almost drowned! So, I mean …”
Well, that certainly didn’t go as intended.
I had been trying to explain the joy of running. And more importantly, running long distances. How it’s freeing. And fun. And when you run with really adventurous (stupid) people – like I did in college – it becomes an experience you can later tell at the dinner table … where your daughter will question your IQ.
She joined the track team at her middle school, and the other day got to run quite a bit down a street to a major road, probably like 20 feet away from school.
“You did!?!” I said excitedly. “That’s the best part of running. It’s so ‘freeing!’ While all the other sports are stuck on school grounds, your whole objective is to run away like a bunch of escaped convicts who just dug a tunnel out of prison. It’s so liberating!”
And then I told what I thought would be an inspiring story about a time on my college cross country team when our coach dropped us off at the beach pier. Instead of running back along any of the conventional routes (sidewalk, call for a taxi cab), we decided to run through Anastasia State Park, all the way to the tip … because we could … and because we were a bunch of idiots.
But once we got to the tip, we realized why so many cross country runners die curled up in a forest somewhere muttering, “Why didn’t I just turn left when I saw the sign for town!?!” Because at the tip, there is no magical portal to town. No, instead there’s an inlet with breakers, and usually a drunk, weathered fisherman mumbling, “Dummies! Now you have to go all the way back!”
Only … no, we don’t. If runners are anything, we’re stubborn and don’t know when we’re bested … or about to die! So, we rounded the bend, thinking (much like Christopher Columbus) we might find some undiscovered, secret route to India, or Indiana, or wherever the heck he was going. Only, all we found was marshland and swampy shoreline and dune critters pointing and making fun of our pale white legs in short shorts.
When we found ourselves across the waterway from the lighthouse, we came to the kind of conclusion all runners face: drowning or getting run over by a speedboat beats backtracking and facing drunk fishermen. So, we swam across and ran back to school looking like skinny swamp monsters.
It is one of my favorite running stories, but it landed with a thud: “Did you get good grades in college?” she asked.
I like to think something in that story registered. We have started running together, and shared a pretty magical sunset the other night. There’s adventure to be had in those running shoes. And once in a while a magical portal back home … just make sure to ignore the fishermen and hysterical critters.