More than fifty years ago, my high school gym teacher Miss Jones nicknamed me Clod and created a special class for me and two other klutzes. While the rest of my classmates played field hockey or softball or volleyball, I donned a dour expression and my gold and white striped jumper and jog-walked round and round the track. I have a hazy recollection of Miss Jones timing me and urging me to best myself, but walking in circles, while better than flailing about on a basketball or volleyball court, was not my thing. So each class, I wobbled like a caged gym rat for 40 minutes and then stumbled into the locker room, stripped off my gymsuit, turned on the showerhead, and stood aside so when Miss Jones walked by the stall she’d think I was showering, and issue me a point or two for cleaning up my act.
My brother, on the other hand, was an athlete, a runner, a high school star who ran track and cross country and looked like he belonged on the cover of Tiger Beat. He wasn’t just a high school star; he was the family star. My father followed his every athletic pursuit and his many scrapbooks teemed with clippings of my brother’s winning races.
My parents weren’t what you’d call athletes, but they liked to look good, loved to dance and strove to stay in shape. In the 70s they did take up running, complete with exercise regimens and matching jogging suits
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Through the years, Mom and Dad urged me to get a little exercise and often asked me to join their daily strolls. At first I couldn’t keep up with either of them, but after a while I made strides and while never zippy, I could cover a mile or so without keeling over.
In the 90’s walking became the most popular form of exercise in the country and some road races, once confined to runners, opened up to walkers. Occasionally my parents took part in such races.
In 1998, almost three decades after graduating high school, I was driving past my alma mater and noticed a sign saying “Run For Education 5K, Saturday August 5th.” I wouldn’t have given this a second thought, but the next line on the marquee unearthed the inner athlete in me. It read: “Anything Goes.”
Heck, this race includes walkers, my inner jock mused. I might not be able to run, but walk, I could do. And my father, who spent so much time tracking my brother’s pursuits, would be proud. I might even get a shout-out in his scrapbook.
For my debut, I didn’t exactly follow a racer’s protocol. I spent that steamy race day at a waterpark with my sister and our children, then cut it close to change my clothes. Also I forgot my bra and had to run my first-ever race in a sticky ill-fitting bathing suit. I did yank on a fluorescent green tank top I’d bought for a quarter at a yard sale and some flimsy shorts to cover the suit, but still, the moisture…
Falmouth is an upscale community. Most people who live there, live well. None of them would run a road race in a bathing suit. Most of them would not step foot into a yard sale. For decades the high school’s nickname was The Yachtsman and the mascot was a bearded sailor named “Yachtie.” You get the pretty picture.
The racers were milling about. The men, some of them shirtless and bronzed, wore Nike Airs™ and Converse™. My tanned, fit sister-in-law was wearing a black crop top and flowered Nike Pro shorts™. And here I was wearing wide, white walking shoes and a damp bathing suit camouflaged by a cast-off tank top.
I was the poster child for Anything Goes.
Sometime between pinning my bib to my bathing suit and fetching my first ever race shirt, I overheard someone chatting about that night’s show at the school and a dark revelation, a midnight tsunami, swept over me and my inner athlete and we nearly drowned.
Because, if you can believe this (and I’m telling you, I could not) Anything Goes did NOT mean walkers were welcome in this race.
Anything Goes meant the Cole Porter musical.
The Cole Porter musical that was playing at my alma mater that very night.
If I could have run, I would have — just like Forrest Gump — one hundred miles in the opposite direction.
But my brother was hustling me to the starting line, my sister was filming me and my posterior for posterity, and I was too far into this debacle to back out. A little breathless and a lot panicked, I scanned the competition and asked hopefully, “Are there any other walkers in this race?”
“August fifth,1998,” my sister Lorna narrated as she hefted my camcorder on her shoulder, “and Lynn is running in her first road race.”
“This is her strategy,” Lorna continued. “Lie in the sun all day and then don’t bring a bra and run in your bathing suit.”
“Is there any spot where I can pull a Rosie Ruiz?” I queried in a nod to the 1980 Boston Marathon fraudster. But then I realized that I couldn’t shorten my route, because, well, I didn’t know the route.
“This is the excitement before the race starts,” Lorna continued. “Lynn’s feeling a little tense.”
Lorna panned to my Ken doll brother, his checkbook peeking out the back pocket of his khaki shorts, and a broad, confident smile.
“And this is the coach with his checkbook,” Lorna continued.
“You never know,” he chuckled, “I might need it along the way; I might have to hail a taxi.”
“More like a wrecker,” I muttered.
“Yup,” my brother continued and then said to no one in particular, “Just haul her up on the back; we’ll bring her in.”
I turned to a runner in front of me. “I’ve never done a race before; that’s why we’re making fun of me.”
“That’s not why we’re making fun of her,” my brother said.
“Hey, Lynn,” Lorna hollered in sisterly solidarity, “if all else fails… run.”
My brother, the champion runner, the first rate coach, gave me a last minute tip, “You’ve got to be focused. It’s now or never.”
Sensible, thoughtful advice. I steadied my nerves.
“And remember,” he added, “Anything goes.”
“I Get a Kick Out of You” is a signature song from Cole Porter’s musical. Surely that’s the tune spectators were whistling when they saw me try to take flight.
My legs splayed. I listed left. I jog-hopped. To my credit, I swung my arms back and forth in such a furious frantic motion that somehow I propelled forward despite my dead legs, a mythic fluorescent bird, all broken limbs and flapping wings, flanked by my brother and followed by a trio of bicyclists.
In case it’s not obvious, follow the lady in lime.
I don’t recall much of the next forty-one minutes and forty-five seconds, except that my inner athlete soon threatened to ditch me in the nearest ditch, and in short order, the 74 runners in front of me were history. It was just my brother pointing out fancy houses and spewing cherry platitudes, and me wobbling, wheezing, and wondering how much it was going to hurt when three bicyclists rear-ended my rear end.
Then somehow I found myself in familiar territory: breathless and jog-walking around the Falmouth High School track – praying for the end.
Unlike old times, people were clapping for me, cheering me on. I tried to move faster, tried to get the whole ordeal done, tried to hustle so these fancy people could return to their fancy homes, or head to that night’s madcap musical, or do whatever upscale, athletic, attractive people do after a road race, but I remained all slo-mo and jagged, my lungs all huff and puff. Still, l lumbered forth, one unsteady step at a time.
It wasn’t pretty, but by the grace of Miss Jones, my brother, and some faint high school muscle memory, I crossed the finish line and landed a straight shot into my father’s scrapbook, my 41:45 time memorialized.
Which would be the perfect ending to this story – and to my athletic career – except if you can believe this (and again, I could not), somehow, somewhere, someone plunked an errant “4” in front of the only sports stat of my life transforming my time to 441:45.
That’s right. According to the Yarmouth Shopping Notes, it took me seven hours, twenty-one minutes and forty-five seconds to run 5 kilometers.
Days later, bragging in his diary about his forty-five-year-old daughter’s first road race, my proud father penned both my epitaph and my perfect ending:
Came in last
but finished.
THE STORY AFTER THE STORY
I laughed so hard reading this. Thank you, Clod!