The Woodberry Harrier 2012: Volume 3
The beat goes on...Mr. Blain recently gave our English class a copy of the “To be or not to be” speech from Hamlet without telling us where it came from. Some of us suspected who had written it, but when we began looking closely at the images and the syntax and the shades of meaning in the words, no one had a doubt that we were reading Shakespeare. And that was what struck me most about the exercise. Although my classmates and I disagreed about what exactly the speaker was saying, we all agreed that this was a Shakespearean piece just by the sounds of the words combined in the lines.
In many ways, I experience this team--and onlythis team--the same way. I return in the last weeks of each August and consider what the new team will look like, how it will operate, what its dynamics will be. I think about the year before, wondering if I will spend the season reminiscing about the golden days with Taylor and Stuart, Kevin and Matt, or Hagood, Logan and Addison. I wonder if the people in the present will ever match people of the past, and I wonder if there will be new friendships to equal the old ones. I wonder if this team will have much of that undefinable yet unmistakable element that draws me back every day, every fall, to Hale’s bench. I’ve come to see that mysterious element the same way I see the subtly varied iambic pentameter that makes Shakespeare’s verse instantly recognizable. Each fall I feel the familiar rhythms of the previous seasons but with fresh variations.
At camp this year when we first entered the kitchen, we stood and admired a dish washer gleaming in the morning light. Those of us returning recalled the hours bent over sinks of hot water at the old camp, scrubbing long after the cooks had retired to their bunks. This was when it first hit me that this season would be different, and at first, it worried me.
Then Perry provoked Sipho into a frenzy. Some laughed hysterically and encouraged him, while the humanitarians begged him to stop. And in this moment of frivolous disagreement, I suddenly saw that same recognizable but unnamable element. I heard the same rhythms and the same tone but with new speakers and different purposes in a different place with a different dog. The old base meter is there—just in a different poem.
And back at school I hear that beat in the daily routine. Hines usually beats me to the locker room and sometimes Robert too. I follow, then Averett, Billy, Perry, and David (in that order) while Nick and Brandon scramble in at 3:43. Different muddy training shoes litter the floor, but the smell is the same. And we talk about the same things: Sydnor’s workload, when we’ll run Mormont, who ate the chili dogs at lunch. Nick and I remind someone--anyone--to get the water. A few minutes later under the tree, all our eyes scan the hill. A bike with a dog running beside it means we must brace for a grueling interval workout. A mini-bus means we’ll be running distance in the country---though one day it will mean Moormont and that little nagging awareness tempers what might otherwise be relief. No one says this, though, because no one needs to. It’s just one more layer of what’s understood, and what’s understood is one more layer of the bond among us---the bond among all of Hale’s teams: it’s as if together we share---or form--- a vortex, like the ones Joyce has taught about us about in Yoga, those core energy centers which fuel all the parts of the body and harmonize with the mind. So we sit there on the bench waiting for the bus, talking about nothing and throwing sticks, just as so many runners have done before us.
A few minutes later after jogging a “monster lap” and stepping onto the track, I stare into Nick’s shoulder blades on our 6-minute run and recognize the footfalls a few paces behind me: Averett. I make out a sharp inhalation: Hines. I turn my head and see a bobbling shadow: Robert. An hour later collapsing on the mats in the Barbee, we listen to the crunch in our ankles as we rotate them. We go through the routine I can do in my sleep, the chatter broken every sixty seconds by the beeping of a watch and someone saying “switch.” These are the rhythms of cross country.
It’s in these moments of stretching and joking at the end of the day that I wish I could pause, rewind, and understand it all. I would like to grasp exactly how the practice worked on a microscopic level, exactly why I feel the way I do. Then maybe I could reproduce it later. It would be good to be able to re-create at will the satisfaction that comes only on the Barbee mat. You are happy enough to ignore the stinking sweat in your shirt and the dried salt on your skin, happy enough to go to bed right then, un-showered and exhausted and smiling all the same. But I know I can’t re-produce that feeling any more than I can reproduce the “To be or not to be” speech. In four years on this team, I’ve realized only that each year the old familiar beat pulls each of us into the complex combination of piquancy and meaning of the team and its season--both the same as and very different from previous teams and seasons. But each fall also reminds me that there is a great beauty in letting a powerful mystery just be as it is, and that’s why I return to the bench every day.---Peter Shelton ‘13
Peter's words resonte powerfully for me. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of teams past, sometimes so vividly that I can squint and see them in front of me doing the same workout in the same spot, bend an ear and hear them talking to me. I constantly recall (and use) the lessons they taught me and wonder what they recall, wherever they are out there. And when I catch myself not being grateful enough for living in these poems Peter describes, I imagine the future (still far away, I hope) when there will be a team I shall never meet running for a coach who may now be in kindergarten somewhere, but I like to think their days will be touched in ways they will never understand by the spirit of the little team who met me today under the tree. Peter is right about that energy field.
One reason it has been especially easy to recall the past this season is that former captain Andrew Campbell has been coming down from Culpepper twice a week to help me coach. The boys have loved this, and so have I. The beat does indeed go on.
Well, much has happened at the bench--and beyond—since we last checked in. This year we took off a weekend from racing, and this (among other things) has meant that we skipped an edition of The Harrier somewhere, so there is lots of news to catch up.
We have been working hard these last three weeks, but we have also been taking fewer risks in the training than we have in the past (With a team this lean, we can’t risk even one more minor injury), yet I have been impressed daily with the focus and efficiency of the workouts, and the PR’s reflect their constant efforts and their commitment.
We made our annual pilgrimage to Moormont on Monday, and we had 70-degrees under blue skies, the perfect day to look for miles in all directions, but the day got off to a bad start with one guy missing the bus. This led to much fuming on the part of one Type-A coach, as you can imagine, but it led to a wonderful experience the following day. We went back out there for him to do the workout before our distance run, and he had volunteer company on every rep, and on the last one the entire team joined him for the final steep stretch. It reminded me how right Peter is about some of the most meaningful experiences coming during the daily routine of practice.
WFS vs. St. Christopher’s and Benedictine | |||
Woodberry Lower Course | |||
5 October 2012 | |||
WFS: 19 (1-5 spread: 59 sec.) St Christopher’s: 50 Benedictine: 69 | |||
Time | Place out of 21 runners | ||
Singleton | 17:44 | 1st | a season PR |
Liles | 17:57 | 3rd | |
Shelton | 18:22 | 4th | |
Evans | 18:39 | 5th | a season PR |
Flory | 18:43 | 6th | a season PR |
Hammond | 18:49 | 7th | a season PR |
Osterman | 19:07 | 8th | a season PR |
Neath | 19:57 | 10th | a season PR |
Dameron | DNR | ||
And last week we hosted EHS here for our annual dual, which we ran on the main course. Here are the results of that match up:
WFS vs. EHS | |||
WFS Golf Course | |||
19 October, 2012 | |||
WFS: 15 EHS: 50 1-5 spread: 47 sec. | |||
Time | Place out of 14 runners | ||
Singleton | 18:05 | 1st | 46 sec. PR for this course |
Shelton | 18:17 | 2nd | 9 sec. season PR for this course |
Liles | 18:22 | 3rd | 4 sec. season PR for this course |
Evans | 18:47 | 4th | 46 sec. season PR for this course |
Flory | 18:52 | 5th | 14 sec. season PR for this course |
Hammond | 18:56 | 6th | 40 sec. PR for this course |
Osterman | 19:22 | 7th | 22 sec. PR for this course |
JV | Out of 29 Runners | ||
Neath | 20:15 | 1st | 1:23. season PR for this course; 9 sec. lifetime PR for the course |
Dameron | 21:55 | 2nd | |
And yesterday we hosted our annual dual with Fork Union on the Lower Course. Fork Union clobbered us at their place early in the season, and all fall they have been the odds-on favorite of many to bring down Trinity in the championships. I was thrilled that we ran so well against them. If we can tighten our pack and keep it together next week (and keep everyone healthy), we will have a good shot at them in the Prep League.
WFS vs. FUMA | |||
WFS Lower Course | |||
26 October, 2012 | |||
Place: 2nd 1-5 spread: 60 sec. | |||
Time | Place out of 14 runners | ||
Singleton | 17:09 | 3rd | 35 sec. season PR |
Liles | 17:24 | 5th | 33 sec. PR on this course & season PR; 25 sec. lifetime PR |
Shelton | 17:25 | 6th | 57 sec. PR on this course; 8-sec season PR; 5 sec lifetime PR |
Hammond | 17:47 | 7th | 1:02 PR on this course & season PR |
Flory | 18:09 | 8th | 34 sec. PR on this course & season PR |
Evans | 18:18 | 9th | 21 sec. PR on this course & season PR |
Neath | 19:21 | 11th | 36 sec. PR on this course & season PR |
JV | Out of 15 rummers | ||
Dameron | 21:15 | 5th | |
Osterman | DNR | ||
We have come a very long way as a team since the FUMA Invitational, but everything comes down to the next two weekends. We have the potential---if we get everything right—to have an amazing finish, but we have no margin of error whatsoever. Wish us luck. And if you can get to Panorama Farms in Earlysville next Friday afternoon for the Prep League Championships, we race at 2:30. The following weekend, we compete in the State Meet here at WFS, again at 2:30.
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