For the past few weeks, Alex and I have been discussing the beautiful, embarrassing pain that comes from organized youth sports. What has been overlooked so far in this series is organized youth sports' soul mate: middle school gym class.
Now 95 percent of middle school gym class is half-heartedly playing kickball or acting like "speedball" is a legitimate sport, but twice a year we would have the dreaded "fitness week." This consisted of the typical gym class exercises: push-ups, shuttle-run, crunches, etc. It was miserable. While most team sports give you opportunities to hide your incompetence, or at least minimalize it, fitness week clearly quantifies just how weak you are.
To cap off each fitness week, the gym teachers would take us to a quarter-mile loop for the finale: the mile run. It was four laps of glory for some, pain for others and dread for me.
Going into the mile run in the fifth grade, I was mistakenly confident. I thought I looked like a good runner; I was really skinny and had little natural upper body. Besides, I had no sprint speed, so I assumed I possessed natural endurance to compensate for my slow leg turnover. As we waited for the girls to finish so we could start, I had a big smirk on my face. I had no idea I was about to find out how little I knew about physiology.
As soon as the race began, a group shot to the front. Through the first lap, being behind the front pack only made me cockier. They may have been ahead of me for now, but I had not reason to worry. I was pacing myself, and over the next three laps I would overtake them and finish in the top five, at worst. Looking back at it, I was wrong all the time when I was younger.
During the second lap, I quickly realized that I was the one getting slower, and by the third I was being passed by kids who had slowly jogged the first lap as a sign of protest (over what, I do not know) against the gym teachers. When the fourth lap came, I was so gassed I could not even respond as another group sprinted past me on the final straightaway. Crossing the line, I looked around at who had finished and came to an impossibly sad conclusion: half the kids had already finished their post-race stretch and were mocking the current finishers.
The next year, I asked my mom to take me to the track the week before the run so I could time myself. In seventh grade, I "coincidentally" bought new running shoes a week before fitness week and tried a couple two-mile runs. None of it mattered. Each year the disappointment grew.
A month out of fitness week in eighth grade, I decided to train a little. Occasional jogs became nearly daily runs, and by the time fitness week rolled around, I was ready for the last event. I went through the first lap with the main pack, dropped off a bit in the middle two, but held on at the end. When I looked around, I cheerfully pointed out to myself that for the first time in my middle school career, I was above average in the mile run.
I had finally conquered my demons and ended a fitness week with some level of accomplishment, yet somehow I was not finished. With trepidation, I joined my high school's cross-country team, where I was once again one of the worst there. After finishing far behind the pack on the first run, I came back the next day with patient optimism and never looked back. This time, I was a runner.
