Grivet Outdoors

I settled in the second coral and watched the swiftest runners, including Chris, dart off over the horizon. I was envious of how effortless those most talented runners make things look, even though I knew from Chris how hard they are actually working. These are men and women of regular flesh and bone who suffer and struggle just like the rest of us. The illusion of their lack of strain is just that, an illusion. As for me, I ran with all the grace of a Mack Truck. Sweat drenched me even before I started actually running and it literally poured over me like a salty ocean wave before I reached the end of first mile. I marveled at myself that I could find this totally normal. Runners are different from the air-conditioned masses who smartly seek shelter from such oppressive conditions. We actually pay our hard-earned cash for the privilege of running in the worst conditions mother nature can throw at us.

I settled in and targeted some of my fellow runners to hang with in the hope that they would drag me along with them, at least mentally. Sometimes I passed them, sometimes I fell back, and sometimes I just maintained our distance. It was a long game of cat and mouse that ate up the miles before, at last, the finish line came into view.

I mustered whatever strength I had and sprinted toward the finish. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with that idea as whole groups of runners jostled with one another to pick up or lose a spot or two in the final rankings.

After crossing the line, I was bent over, breathless. Chris was off in the distance doing his cool down after outlasting the competition to finish first overall by the slimmest of margins.

After I recovered, Chris and I turned back and jogged along the course in the opposite direction to support my wife, Christina, and daughter Rebecca. Along the way I tried to encourage everyone I saw still struggling along the super-heated course. I have always believed that runners are unique among athletes since they are often moved to encourage all the other competitors in the race, no matter if they are in front or back. It’s part of what makes our sport so special. As for me, I ran with all the grace of a Mack Truck.

20 The Back

Christina, my wife, and Rebecca, my eldest daughter, settled themselves in the last corral. They looked around them and saw the familiar faces of other regular runners. It took them both a long time to believe that the term “runner” actually applied to them, even though they both now use the descriptor without a second thought. There is a notion circulating among the nonrunning community that erroneously claims that there is something called a “jogger.”

When you ask people who use that term to be more specific about the difference between the two groups, they say things like, “Runners wear expensive sports gear and custom shoes. Joggers wear sweatpants and hoodies. Runners win medals and set records. Joggers slog around the local park in an endless quest for something called “fitness.” Runners are athletes. Joggers are everybody else.”

Of course, the truth is there really no such thing as a jogger. There are only runners of different ability levels. Speed has nothing to do with being a runner, nor does body type, clothing, shoes, awards, or any other arbitrary thing that someone randomly considers important to the sport. Consider those who race in wheelchairs. They are runners. Working legs aren’t a requirement to enter the runners’ club.

Being a runner has more to do with the spirit needed to brave a course powered by nothing but what each person was born with and braving a sweltering summer’s day to do the most basic of human activities, to run.

Runners have no bikes or motorized form of locomotion to assist them. They move across a course in the same way that they move in their everyday lives, while in the office or at school or at home. It is the purest of all sports. In ancient Greece, runners raced around in the buff, literally taking nothing with them to the competition other than themselves.

While I don’t recommend that route today (police really need to focus on traffic control rather than enforcing indecent exposure laws) it is a beautiful illustration of the essence of a runner. At the very core of it, we compete only with those tools we were born with and with the skills we have sharpened with our training and experience. Some would argue that humans were born to run, and runners are only doing what comes naturally. The term “runner” makes for a big and inclusive tent, which encompasses anyone willing to move themselves over the miles. There is no room, however, for terms like “jogger” that artificially segregate and divide based on misguided arbitrary standards.

Rebecca and Christina both knew the starting line drill well. The corrals set off one by one until, at last, the last grouping was set free with the familiar threesecond countdown blared over a megaphone.

Their adrenaline pushed them forward for a while, but Christina soon tired and the pair slowed down and walked together for a while.

Rebecca is the more fit of the two, but she rarely runs these races on her own. She loves to talk to her mother or to another running friend to pass the time.

Christina, on the other hand, is all business on the run. She enjoys Rebecca’s company as a distraction to the inevitable struggles faced during a run, but usually she only contributes a few breathless words here and there to the general conversation. She

runs for her health, and for the comradery she feels with so many members of the Memphis running community. When she runs, however, she devotes herself body and soul to the endeavor.

The two women covered the course in their predictable time. They are amazingly consistent in their finishing times no matter the course or the weather conditions. Their legs just seem programmed to a particular cadence race after race.

Chris and I joined them over the last half mile and chimed into the conversation Rebecca had started. I’ve learned not to be overly enthusiastic during these reunions because, for some inexplicable reason, that annoys my wife.

Instead, I use my well-practiced subdued words of support and encouragement and do my best to distract her from the task at hand.

Chris and I peeled off just before the finish line and watched the girls complete their race together. They raised their hands in celebration, and the two smiled at their shared accomplishment, a joy shared by all the other runners around them as they, too, finish their races.

The finish line of a race must be one of the most joyous places on earth. Chris and I couldn’t help but smile with them. Being a runner has more to do with the spirit needed ...