The Woodberry Harrier 2016: Volume 2

Not Just Any Old Day

It’s not my usual morning sipping coffee on my porch listening to the birds and the squirrels.  I’m sweating already from rushing to get loaded in time, and I’m wondering what we’ve forgotten. Something important.  I do have coffee, but it’s sealed is a high-tech mug and I can’t smell it when I sip, and all I am hearing is the tinny creak of the mini-bus frame and the rattle of loose windows and the riffling of the plastic bags of breakfast snacks in the back.  It’s hardly a contemplative moment, but to me it might as well be sunrise over Mount McKinley.

By the time we get to Culpeper, everyone is asleep.  I watch the town stir as we come through. Saturday mornings are the best of all in small towns with people up early to seize or savor a day off:  a café full of the weekend regulars lingering over breakfast, roadside vendors setting up for a long day, boats headed to the lake, trucks headed to the Farmers’ Coop.  Usually I long to be with all of them at once, the loafers and bustlers, the chore listers and the pleasure seekers. All are glad to have the day, and the Man will have no say in what they do or how they do it.

But today something vaguely like sadness passes through me because today we are headed to a meet and they are not.  It’s like waking up on Christmas morning and looking out the window to realize that the neighbors think it’s just Wednesday. 

Today is not any old day.  It is race day, and the people we pass haven't the slightest clue.  We move invisibly, part of the traffic.  Who among them will give us more than a passing thought?  How can they know of the hopes and fears knocking gently against each other in those sleeping, rocking heads?  They can’t know that in two hours there will be stories in those heads, some inspiring, some frustrating, and some confusing?  How can they know that no one on the van will be exactly the same when we pass again in the afternoon going the other way?

To be fair, they could be hitching a ride on the van and not see this.  None of these stories is likely to be very dramatic (or perhaps even interesting to anyone but a skinny kid in a middle seat and a bald headed driver). The changes they carry will be subtle.  The sharp little shard of regret, not big enough to draw much blood but big enough to scratch.  The smooth marble of confidence which feels good in the hand but also tiny and easy to lose.  The many-sided chunk of doubt, small enough to hide in the pocket but hard enough to shatter a plate glass window. 

But even if the observer saw one of these new possessions, he wouldn’t know that the find is really only the beginning of the story.  Some will be lost or tossed or stored away and forgotten, and these will have to be discovered and handled all over again next week.  But for the few ready to hold them in the full light and look without squinting or turning away, they will become magic treasures of immeasurable and lasting worth. I do not exaggerate a whit.

And I am astonished to know this—again—suddenly.  I can’t help but think of my soul mates in coaching who are not on a van this morning.  Reed Finlay and Joe Halm, both called away from this life far, far too soon.  My retired friends Bruce Nystrom and Weldon Bradshaw and Buzz Male and Dave Bloor all waking this morning and knowing, wherever they are and whatever they are doing, that they are missing this. I imagine them all there on the corner watching the van pass. They know what it carries.  And they are all then in my head telling me to please, please pay attention and not miss it—not any of it—and to try to be grateful enough, though that will be impossible. 

  

The Harriers traveled south down US-15 to the Fork Union Invitational, an annual event for the squad.  This was a great opportunity to get a first look at many of the other Prep League teams including defending State and Prep League champions Trinity Episcopal. Despite terrible heat (so hot that they shortened the second race and cancelled the third)  the team competed well, finishing 5^th overall and as the top private school team.

Fork Union Invitational
Fork Union, VA
10 Sept, 2016
5th out of 23 teams 1-5   spread: 1:24 1-7 spread: 1:54
A Race	Time	Place out of 159
Carrington	17:29	14th	1 sec. season PR
Watt	18:14	35th
Rich	18:20	37th
Tydings	18:45	48th
Jacobs	18:53	59th
Clark	19:12	73rd
Lindner	19:25	85th
B Race (2 Miles)		Place out of 278
Singleton	11:27	10th	52 sec. improvement from Ragged Mtn.
Richard	12:10	42nd	3 sec. improvement from Ragged Mtn.
Kacur	12:36	72nd
Sompayrac	12:36	73rd	16 sec. improvement from Ragged Mtn.
Dearborn	12:38	75th	1 sec. improvement from Ragged Mtn.
McKay	12:56	110th
Duke	12:58	114th
Wall	DNR
Ross	DNR