2008 Alumni Race (Plansky Invite)

Back to Williamstown. This place seems to stand separate from the rest of my life, even while holding a sizeable cache of memories. It looks so much the same despite all the construction, but new people have been cycling through, making it their own while I've been gone. I can't tell if I know the place or not anymore, but that's just a result of an attempt to reconcile a dissonance born of a mistake. It wasn't a place I went to for four years (the mistake was thinking it was so), but a network of people I joined abruptly and then left almost as suddenly four years later. The strange feeling comes from associating the community of people with the place and then returning to find different people walking all the paths and living in all the spaces I remember my friends claiming as their own.

Not that the place itself isn't worth remembering.

I came back to see people, but there is also a race, and for one who has defined himself for so long as a runner, this is a very important thing indeed. Saturday morning Chris Ellis-Ferrara and I join the other alums at the home course for the Williams Cross Country traditions.

Like a curse slipping in front of your grandparents, realizing that was fish bowl water you just drank, or introducing your gf to an ex, a bad bear toss is awfully cringe-worthy. Luckily the alumni in the 8k had none of that. T Bear flew high and true.

After some striders, which may have chilled us more than warmed us, we assembled facing the starter. Those among us who had defied the sports equipment nazi senior year proudly wore their Williams colors, which they officially reported "lost". I wore GVH maroon. And Jim Clayton proved that he still fits in his middle school XC jersey.

Our selfish instincts got the better of us as we lined up, piling wide across the line instead of stacking in rows behind it. Jim and Grant Burgess warned that they were going to 'throw bows' to get in front. We chuckled.

The gun went off and I was taken by surprise when Jim's elbow connected with my chest. The blow did no harm, but, for the moment, Jim had taken the mental edge.

Straight out into the uneven ground of the practice fields we went. I moved up into third behind (I think) Jeff Stenzel of Williams and a college of New Jersey runner named Chris Guerrie.

Heading back towards mount greylock high school after one loop of the fields Stenzel called back, "Neal, what pace are you running?"

Was he showing respect to a competitor? (or an elder perhaps?) Playing a mind game to make the competition nervous? Probably just politely asking, "when are you going to help out with leading?"

I think he thought I was right behind him instead of New Jersey-Chris. I told Stenzel I was going to see what the first mile turned out to be and figure it out from there. Chris offered up 5:05 even though nobody was asking him. 5:05 sounded like a plenty fast pace for me. I wondered if he was serious about running that fast.

As we rounded the tree at the corner of the high school and headed up hill into the woods I heard tons of people cheering for me. It felt great to be back and see all that Williams Purple. Chris pushed the pace up the hill as I eased off. Stenzel dropped back into the pack behind us. I regained the ground I lost to Chris on the rolling leaf-strewn down hills of the woods loop, as I knew I would. I even took the lead feeling good.

Chris passed me back on the next uphill. He was either ridiculously good at hills or pushing very hard. I felt confident in my energy-conserving strategy.

We rolled through the backside of the course. I hadn't run cross country since last November. Damn it felt good to be moving fast over earth.

Chris kept pushing the up hills. Even the long one just before we pop out of the trees again. I listened for his breath. It sounded ragged. I figured I had this race in the bag.

Out on the open grass again, Chris lead into the second loop of the practice fields. My legs started to feel heavy and he seemed to be pushing the pace. Still, I wasn't worried. I took the lead again on the second time through the woods loop and this time gave a little more fight on the uphills. I figured this had to be hurting him more than it was hurting me. Being on my home course was going to my head.

We topped that godawful long hill and popped out of the trees with not even a half mile to go. It's mostly, but not quite down hill from there. I still had the lead and accelerated to fast-but-still-have-a-kick pace, or so I thought.

I lead around the dirt track and thought that surely I could power through to the finish for a win if I could just make it to the curve. My legs felt so heavy. I rounded the curve and kicked... nothing. I had no other gear, and I knew, shit, he's right behind me, isn't he? Chris kicked right on by and my brain and body just said, fuck it. I started doing the rag doll dance and in that moment my biggest pain was embarrassment, because it looked like I was giving up and putting on a show to justify it. I had given up, but some sensible part of my brain was screaming, quit making me look like a fool. My limbs were not listening.

I had time for physical pain after crossing the finish line. Cleaning fluid, rotten eggs, dead rat, the dark side of the force, nuclear radiation, I felt like I had a wad of all those things lodged in my stomach. And for some damn reason my stomach did not want to get rid of it. So I waited in agony while the nice trainers tried to help. "Drink more water, maybe that will help you throw up. If only we had some salt and vinegar chips. That would do it."

The water eventually did the job, filling up my stomach until my stomach deigned to release the nastiness it held hostage. I opened my body and mostly water flowed and flowed and flowed out. This is what happens when you race faster than you've trained to race without totally getting over an illness. I felt much better afterwards. Like one of the "10 K challenge" participants said. It felt like evil leaving my body.

By the time I cleaned my face off and changed shoes, the alumni 5k had nearly started. I still needed to get a cooldown in and I had promised Furlong I would run the 5k, so I went to the line again. Furlong had encouraged me to run with the suggestion that I run slow. "You can run with me," he said. The race started and I quickly realized that Furlong was nowhere near slow enough for me in the state I was in. The young alumni disappeared into the distance, the old alumni ran away, the women put a gap on me. Then some of the young alumni women, who were running the race at conversation pace began to pass me. I managed to match their speed. I ran with Liz, Mallory, Megan, and Lisetta for the entire 5k. We had a nice leisurely time. Liz and Mallory threw in a kick to beat me at the line. I didn't mind. Embarrassment had passed out of my body earlier with all the other fluids.

The rest of Saturday I walked the campus, enjoying the colors. I took pictures but they turned out poorly so I've borrowed pictures taken by Colin Carroll and Laura Ellison, and those are the ones you are seeing posted here. Note these pictures were taken during alumni weekend on fairly standard cameras. I'm impressed. I walked down to Cole Field and watched some ultimate frisbee with Ally Holmes and Laura Ellison. Aaron Schwartz and I played some N64. Then I went to the alumni pizza party to talk and hang out with the alums and a lot of the current Seniors. I caught up with many people but failed to catch up with others as we all wound our different ways through the room.

Catching up with old friends means repeating the same information: this is what I do, this is where I live. We share generalities. Things are nice, fine, maybe even good. This is how hundreds of days of experience must be distilled. Maybe we've got some anecdotes to share, but usually not anything we can carry across the void of un-shared experiences we've accumulated between us. In many ways, I'd rather send out a mass email. Here is what everyone has been doing in two sentences, but then what would we ask each other? Maybe we need this common unknown to reheat the leftovers of our relationships, but it would be nice to ask, "What epiphanies have you had since we last met?" "How have you grown as a person?" "What new insights into the universe can you share?" but then we might not be able to answer these questions and how sad would that be to think that maybe things haven't changed much, except that we're a little older?

Results of mens 8k

Race report from Williams

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