Yesterday was a good day. I was looking for the signs, and the signs were all showing green. Here's what I was looking for mostly: A Job. I was a bloodhound on a trail, and my nose was pointing me due north five to ten miles, to the town of Bothell.
For readers not familiar with the town of Bothell, it is a typical looking small town connected like a caboose to Seattle, which lies thirty miles south as the crow flies, and let me tell you, there are a lot of crows in this neck of the woods. Bothell is not as hip as Seattle, but they have a Starbucks where the refugee hipsters hang out. Bothell is home to the tiny Cascadia campus of the University of Washington. When one arrives in Bothell it is best to pay attention, because you will pass through the town in under five minutes.
The real surprise, for me, is the Bothell Business Park. Let me tell you about the park. Imagine a clever California contractor jacking up a business park in Orange County and plopping it in the middle of a meadow surrounded by fir trees. That's Bothell Business Park. As I walked around the thirty or so perfect, uniform, clean, upbeat buildings I thought I was having a flashback to when I worked in Mira Mesa, CA. The buildings were doing it to me. And then I saw my destination - Brooks Sports. I had found Nirvana. Finding it was like the lotus opening; I was forced to confront not only my job search but an incident from my childhood. Let me explain.
I have always been an athlete. And when you possess athletic skills from the beginning of your life, you feel the pull of destiny to achieve something spectacular. You are driven. It is the competitive nature that makes an athlete strive for victory in all they do. When I was a boy I wanted to be a geologist, an astronaut, a pro baseball player, or to win an event in the Olympics. Essentially, I wanted my face on the front of a Wheaties box.
My legs were the first part of my body to grow when puberty set in. In the space of two years I shot up six inches. I had six inches of upper body and the rest was legs. I had restless leg syndrome; I had the urge to run, and my legs could take me there fast. I was Forest Gump. Mr. Nellermoe, the eighth grade track coach noticed my legs and said, "I bet you could run pretty far on those long skinny legs of yours!" And then he said, "You know, boy, there's a school record for the 880 yard dash at this middle school, (this was before the metric system made it the 800 meters), and with those legs you might just break it."
"You mean, that I might break my legs?"
"NO, BOY - THE SCHOOL RECORD! I'M GONNA MAKE YOU A RUNNER!"
I had grown up with a father who was not aware of my existence, and attention from a male mentor was like manna from Heaven. So I replied, "Sure, why not?"
The middle school was poor and did not have a regular track. The track was made of grass, and grass wasn't always cut. It was inferior to cinder and the modern rubberized running tracks. I didn't know the difference. Nellermoe began training me like his personal slave. His training consisted of the following: A.) He held a stopwatch. B.) He said, "Run, Forest, RUN!" And that was about it. He didn't teach me strategy; he simply wanted me to fulfill his goal to smash that record. The record was 2:21, set by a boy whose last name was White. To beat the record, all I had to do was run two moderately fast laps around a track, but as I mentioned, we had no track to speak of.
Nevertheless, I got faster, very fast. I ran so fast I sometimes tasted blood in my mouth. The dandelions were pummeled into dandelion soup. My lungs grew exponentially; my heart grew to the size of a cantaloupe. I learned, that is - I taught myself - to pace my breathing and my head to tell my body, "That's right - RELAX BOY - EASY DOES IT - save your strength for the sprint at the end." And my body obeyed.
We had one track meet on the calendar. It was against the city kids of our town. They had been training on a real track for years. But I had confidence, I had clocked a 2:30 880. If I hadn't stumbled on a rock I may have matched the school record. Nellermoe's face beamed as he clicked the stopwatch that day, "You almost broke the record! Next time, RUN HARDER - BOY!"
The day of the big meet came. I stood next to a short guy with wavy brown hair. I didn't know anything about this kid except his name: Bill Barney. My coach had not warned me about Barney. The other runners didn't worry me, but I figured Barney might be good. When the starting gun fired we set off at a blistering pace. Barney and I left everyone in the cinder dust. We began lapping people on the first lap. We could have stopped for Frappuccino's and won that race. We cruised through the first lap at sixty-five seconds, and we didn't slow down. Around the bleachers we went on the second lap, running side by side in the shadows, stride for stride. I wanted to make small talk, maybe ask Barney what kind of bionics he had in him, but he was all business. He intended to run me into the ground. My legs were a blur, my lungs were saying, "When is this guy gonna fade?" I wanted to elbow that shrimp but former altar boys don't do things like that. Besides, I had a feeling it wouldn't have worked. He was playing head games with me and I had to test his resolve.
But Barney wasn't fading. At a hundred yards out I hit the jets. My after-burners were flaming. I figured I had enough rocket fuel to blow by Barney. I smiled, thinking of that shrimp writhing on the infield, holding his gut. I was wrong; Barney got faster too; he had more gears than a semi-truck headed over a pass. And then the unthinkable happened: about fifty yards or less from the finish line my legs gave out. The top part of me was pumping fine, saying, "We got this, we got this!" but my legs were gone. Barney cruised past me; I thought I was going to pass out, and then I hit the track. It was a cinder track and the cinders tore holes in my palms and legs. I could hear my heart beating like a drum, and the other runners coming, but I couldn't get up. Then I could get up but I didn't want to. So I lay there until everyone passed by.
Nellermoe said as I walked past him, my hands and legs bleeding, "You could have broken the record! Go get on the bus, BOY!"
That year we moved to a new house in an adjacent county. I left all my friends, and Mr. Nellermoe behind. At the new high school I met several horrible coaches who were every bit as bad or worse than Nellermoe. I might have tried to regain my glory but the fire wasn't there. I tried pole vaulting. I was good at it too, but the coach would not buy me and a guy named Lang the poles we needed, so I only vaulted eleven feet. I didn't get the confidence for running again until junior year, and I never went out for track again. I was still fast, and my legs were still long, so I went out for cross-country. I became the number two runner.
So when I saw the Brooks Sports office I had the craziest thought: What if I got back into running again? Would I still be as fast? What could I do NOW? I hadn't been a slacker. I had taken up tennis, golf, bowling, cycling, and occasionally I still ran - mostly on trails in Eugene, Oregon, or on good running tracks. For a while I ran two miles every day. But then my mid-forties came and I cut down on running.
But like the saying goes, "It's never too late to try." I am not as fast as I once was, but I am in great shape. It may take me a year, but with the right shoes, training, and a good track - I'll find out. My goal: to run a 5k next year. I need a running partner like Barney. I wonder what he is up to now?
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