Tyus Southern
As I look back on the treacherous experience of high school as a senior (a trope which I will for the most part attempt to abstain from), I find I am most vividly reminded of my enlightening but often traumatic position on the Wilton cross-country team in freshman and sophomore year. Now, truth be told, I am by far not the most qualified person to write here about running — my sister, a previous columnist and runner, probably gave you all quite a complete picture. However, while I certainly do not have her expertise on the sport, I do have some of the most lasting resentment for it one will ever encounter, and it is for this reason that I sit down to write about it.
My most potent memory of running, besides the short shorts (I could write sonnets about those shorts …), is the sensation of the beginning of a race. The best way I know how to describe it is a practically ineffable panic; a gun goes off and I along with usually around a hundred or so others break into a sprint similar to one a soldier might employ to charge over enemy lines. Every single sweaty teenage boy is dashing for the front; trying to ensure an early victory as some pull ahead and others fall wretchedly behind.
But how strange, following this moment of breathless bolting for the lead there is nothing but steady pace as we all attempt to keep the place we’ve already gained, and become well-acquainted with that lovely cramping sensation one typically gets right under the rib cage, a pain, we are always so insistently reminded, will go away if we simply “run it off.”
Why am I telling you all of this? Good question.
While I may have ultimately quit the cross country team, I did take a lesson from its ruthless anxiety and interminable discomfort: rhythm. Focusing on your rhythm is the act of blocking out the world around you, a kind of meditative state in which the only idea present is the idea of completion of the task you are performing. For example, in those grueling stretches of just trying to hang on in there, it does no good to constantly rethink your position in the race, no matter how far behind you might have fallen, and trust me, as somebody who has never won a cross country race, the ability to block out unnecessary inner commentary is one that saves an awful lot of self-loathing when you finally cross the finish line.
I think of my rhythm now on the cusp of this season’s decay into the next, filled with chilly days and frigid school curriculums, the change that, for centuries, has signified a studious doom for teenagers across the globe. Recall, for a moment, the summer we all spent on the starting line, anxiously awaiting the earsplitting bell that calls us to speed through mountains of homework and tests, challenges us to emerge without paper cuts and assume our places on the honor roll. These are the weeks we dreaded, the days of interminable lecture that loomed like shadows behind our lazy sun-drenched hours. We are currently living out every cramp and strain of a modern education, and, for now at least, getting by. Now’s the time to find our rhythm and power through in whichever way is best for us, and maybe, despite its blasphemous implications, enjoy the race for a little while.
I leave you with the words of author Haruki Murakami on the subject of running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
Tyus Southern is a senior at Wilton High School. He shares this column with four classmates.