My children race by me, and I fear I’ ve tossed them away, thrown them too soon to a crowd that values them only by the minutes and seconds of their time for that day’s race. I stifle a cry when a runner stumbles, or worse, falls down, hoping that my encouragement of the race doesn’t put my children in danger. They’ re too young, I decide, to be left alone to strategize in the midst of all this running fury.

But then my son surges into second place, intent on overtaking the lead runner, and I realize I’m in this race, too, counting my own minutes and seconds, and I yell, “Run faster! You can take him! Dammit! Run faster!”

Another mother, whose son is new to racing, said to me last week, “I love to watch you at races.”

I had never known a woman professional runner before I met Lorraine Moller. Running had been Lorraine’s life for over 25 years. One of the outstanding New Zealand runners who emerged in the 1960s, Lorraine ran in all four Olympic women’s marathons between 1984 and 1996 and won a bronze medal in Barcelona in 1992, even though she was the oldest entrant in the field.

I’m a few years older than Lorraine; she says she never allowed age to be a factor in her races. I asked Lorraine how she became a runner, wondering what she knows that I must learn for myself.

“Running was my destiny. I didn’t plan it. As a young girl there was little support for women runners. Girls were limited to short distances like the 60meter dash. My teachers told me that if I did too much running, I would become masculine, like the Russian women athletes. Others warned me that if I ran too far, my uterus might fall out. limagined something slippery would fall onto the ground one day, and I would say, ‘Oh, what was that?’”

* * *

Only serious lightning will cancel a race. Otherwise, the race doesn’t slow down or stop for weather. Once I went to a race in the fog. Heavy gray-white clouds hung over the racecourse. The park’s towering pine trees peeked out here and there. The runners had to keep each other in sight or they would lose their direction. Packs of runners, coming and going through the mist. Someone rang a cow bell to help the runners stay on track.

* * Eo

The lines of disappearing young runners are not a vision unique to me and to my time and place. Willa Cather writes in Death Comes for the Archbishop of seeing Pueblo runners in the desert. “They coursed over the sand with the fleetness of young antelope, their bodies disappearing and reappearing among the sand dunes like the shadows that eagles cast in their strong, unhurried flight.”

Running is as ancient as the sand in Cather’s dunes. Myths tell us how running affected the cosmos, that the Sun once ran. Running became a link

between man’s world and the spirit world. For some ancient peoples, running meant even more. Running meant participating in the motion that is the life force itself.

Myths also tell how the gods and animals were the first runners. The gods told the people to run. Races decided the characteristics of animals and helped decide an animal’s status in the world. Hawk won the determining race in Cheyenne mythology, and after that, the bravest Cheyenne warriors were named Hawk soldiers.

Isit coincidence or conspiracy that today, as the teams gather in the box area, a red-tailed hawk swoops over and watches from a nearby tree? The tree’s branches are bare, so I see Hawk clearly, watching the race, issuing his challenge, bestowing his blessing.

This is how runners talk.

“It’s always that push to become more, the life force expressing itself.” Lorraine says that’s why runners are willing to race. “I chose never to look at my races in terms of success or failure. I went back to the race week after week and learned something about myself. So no matter what I did, I could always walk away feeling that I had done something rather than having done nothing.”

Doing something rather than nothing. That answers my question. I used to shake my head at the hopeless cases, the ones who came back week after week, the out-of-shape flopping stragglers at the end of the pack, the ones getting lapped, who know they’ II never win, and I used to think to myself, Why are you doing this?

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Some people define themselves through running. Their whole identity comes from the race. But sometimes a person goes beyond self as runner and assumes a second identity who, in turn, becomes a runner.

I’ ve watched a man who, by some ripple of fate, looks just like rock star Rod Stewart. He has a long blond mane, Rod Stewart’s nose. He wore an earring before most men here wore earrings. Some say he speaks in a British accent. The local Rod runs. He enters the citywide races, and dressed in a red, white, and blue singlet and shorts that sport the British Union Jack, he races through the downtown and along the riverfront as Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart racing.

Rod was watching the high school race today, and I hung out near him. He was talking to another man about his job and then about today’s race. There was no accent, just bright yellow hair and that look-alike face. The race has changed his life, I think, and watching him has changed me. I admire the imagination of this man, this runner cumrock star. I love his bravura. His glitter. The race needs more runners like him.

Christine White HOW RUNNERS TALK 105

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The race simplifies and clarifies things. A few weeks ago, my son hada very good race, and afterward a newspaper reporter asked him what he had learned from his previous race that helped him win this race. “I learned I had to run faster,” he answered.

She dutifully wrote that down and quoted him in the paper the next day.

* * *

In some traditions, the qualities of a strong runner—strength for long distances, spurts for shorter distances, breath control, transcending self—are learned by observing the animals, stars, and other natural elements like the wind. The lessons from these natural elements bring a runner victory. “For the tree, the wind is areminder to get exercise,” say the Pueblo. And from the Arapaho: “Our Father, the Whirlwind, by its aid I am running swiftly.”

* * *

Some of my friends think races are boring, but how could it be boring to watch someone run three miles in 14:20? I wonder if I could have gotten that good at something, maybe writing, if [had concentrated on writing as doggedly as the best of these runners have committed themselves to the race. I never concentrated on only one thing. I was sidetracked with diapers and carpools and trying to match up my runners’ tube socks. I didn’t hear the starter’s gun. I see my children racing and watch my dreams and faded ambitions pass by. These runners, I think, have run away with my dreams.

Sometimes I dream about the race. In one dream, I’m running and I finally win, but there’s no tape at the finish line. I hear that sometimes happens. What then, if there’s no tape? Do I keep running? Who says when the race is over, anyway?

My other dream about the race—well, maybe I can play this scene out some day when I’m awake. The race is over, and the crowd is cheering. I walk up to accept my award, and I look out over all the spectators and think, “Today it’s my turn. I won!”

* * *

I’m drawn to the race. At the same time, I shrink back. Lorraine studies mythology and believes that Hera, the archetype of woman as mother, and Artemis, the archetype of woman as athlete, are struggling inside me. The attraction I feel for the race, she says, is really a calling for me to find those qualities within myself.

“When an archetype comes into your life, when a god or a goddess enters your life, you can’t ignore it,” she told me one day over breakfast. “The gods are much greater than you. If you’re in the clutches of Artemis, you’ ve got to go with it.”

* * *

As I watch the girls who race, I remember that the Navajo, who have a long tradition of running, encourage their young girls to run and have built running into the Navajo girl’s puberty ceremony called Kinaalda. The massaging and running parts of the ceremony are meant to symbolically bring strength and beauty to the young woman, who begins her ceremonial runs just as dawn breaks the night’s darkness. The length of her runs, it is said, determines how long she will live. Songs encourage the girl as she runs. One song’s refrain is this: “The breeze coming from her as she runs is beautiful.”

The race changes how we perceive beauty. I listen to three men who are intently following the AA Girls State Cross-Country race. The lead girls are just finishing and are staggering through the chute. The girls are sick from their efforts. The men watch.

“T love it when girls spit,” one man says.

IfIrun east, away from the sun, could I outrun my shadow? This is my koan.

Are we running toward the light or away from darkness? A famous triathlete hoots when I tell her that I admire runners.

“They’re all psychopaths!” she insists. Then, thinking perhaps she has overstated her point, she recants. “You have to be at least a little crazy to race. I think we’re all trying to prove something or win someone’s approval.” ( Speedometer)

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There is a mystique about the race.

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cut, unsullied affair. That’s part of its appeal, this chance for men and women of virtue to come together and test themselves. But the race doesn’t always escape the fray. Patent wneor ofp’ta ehctade Several weeks ago, as I was waiting \cietranamite data 66100

for the race results to be announced, two men, both spectators, got involved in a shouting match.

“Fucking wife beater! He’s a fucking (wtowtiisonse cea )

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Christine White HOW RUNNERS TALK ® 107

a woman pulled on his jacket and tried to move him through the crowd. “He’s not supposed to be here!”

The second man was quick to respond. “I’m allowed to watch my daughter race!”

For an instant the crowd was silent, stunned by this ugly intrusion.

Several coaches moved in. The principal of the sponsoring school stepped between the men.

“You can’t talk like that in front of these kids,” the principal said. ““We’re trying to have an awards ceremony here.”

* * *

The next week, at the end of the junior varsity race, I overheard one runner say this to the boy ahead of him in the chute. “Am I that much better than you that you had to cheat? I’ll get you back. I have your number. I know who you are.”

Talways make sure I can see the runners kick in the final stretch. Some have a strong kick, and others have used up all their energy and have nothing left to kick with. That’s something I don’t understand. Some runners who are way back in the pack, maybe in the last third even, all of a sudden come on with this huge kick as they approach the chute.

If a runner has all that energy still inside, why doesn’t he run faster in the first place? Is there really such a big difference between 47th and 50th place? Is the kick just for show?

A friend of mine who runs every day, a woman in middle age, says her kick means this: “I can do a lot of shit; and I’m not dead yet.”

Here’s a story about Billy Mills. Billy Mills is a Sioux who when he finally decided to commit himself to his running, was incredible. I met him once, several years ago, and I’ve never forgotten him. I was surprised that a runner of his ferocity could be, off the course, so gentle and soft-spoken.

Mills said he was willing to take risks in his distance running, and he proved it the day he won the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics with a 46second PR. He tore down the final stretch. Mills’s win was so unexpected that when he came through the finish line, a Japanese official asked him, “Who are you?”

Picture that: You win at the Olympics and they ask, “Who are you? Who are you?”

What does it mean to win the race and have people ask, “Who are you?” Does it mean you’ ve lived your life saving so much of your energy for the kick that your ability and talent are unknown and largely untapped? Or does it mean