I missed my bus. That's right. I was too slow to catch a snail-like yellow school bus. There, in that moment, my running career began. Embarrassing? Yes. Makes for a good introduction to Part III? I think so.
My Mom and older brother, Tim, literally forced me to take my running shoes to school that day. I had raced the Freshman Run a few days earlier and had been invited to try out for the Freshmen cross country team afterwards. (I was 7th in the race if you are wondering.) CBA has the newbies run a 1.25 mile race in front of the whole school about a week and a half into the new school-year. Every frosh runs. It is tradition. I can remember that George Kochman, my buddy from St. Leo's, won it. Second place was a guy who would play soccer, basketball, and baseball all four years. Not everyone at CBA chooses XC.
I took the invitation and promptly buried it in my book-bag. My mom, being a great mom, disregarded her children's privacy at all times and found the invitation. The heat was on! My family puts a premium on athletics. Not pressure. Never pressure. But we were made to understand the great things that come with participating in sport. More importantly my mom realized that I would be busy after school 5 days a week if I joined the team. That small fact did not escape my attention either. So, as I walked out of the front doors of school that September afternoon I looked sharply for my bus. As soon as I noticed that my ride was pulling away I knew that my mom would find it convenient to not come and get me. I guess I could have walked or run home. I only lived 1.5 miles from where I was standing. The image of running with a book-bag on my back in khakis and a tie was enough to initiate the labor pains. A runner was born.
Being a father, I can speak from experience that a newborn is nothing if not helpless. They rely on others for everything. But, if you look closely, every day they get stronger. They get smarter and bolder. The funny thing is that their need for others to lean on grows in lockstep with all these other traits. A new runner is like a baby, a crying, whining, and vulnerable baby. I was most definitely all these things my freshman year. Fortunately, for us willow trees bending and blowing in the wind, we had joined a team of oaks whose roots spread far and deep. This program knew it was dealing with athletic infants
So, we were schooled. We were reared in the CBA way. We learned about the ones who went before us. We learned about other great runners and teams from the Shore that CBA ran against. We learned the culture of the sport. We slowly, but surely, were shown the path that we were to take if we accepted the invitation. It was the road less traveled indeed. Yet, it had been traveled before. Often by those that we had just spent hours reading about after a tough workout as those same moms that wanted us out of the house after school waited impatiently in the parking lots so they could get us back. For years they would wait for us as we read or talked over and over again about the great Bernards or South Eugene teams of the 70's and 80's. They would wait as we argued over the possibility of any team ever breaking the 5 man average at Holmdel. They would wait for us as we stretched lazily and soaked up the exhaustion that coursed through our bodies. They waited. Thank God the bus driver did not have that same patience.
Each day we grew stronger and bolder. Each day we leaned on each other a bit more. Soon we were crawling and then toddling. Such little freshman, one day we would be running, really running. We knew that some day it would be our turn. And how did we know that? Well, that was one of the many things we learned about while our mom's waited…and waited…and waited for us to come home.