The Woodberry Harrier 2012: Volume 2

All ye need to know…

Last Thursday after one of our favorite runs, which ends near the village of Mitchells, we pulled into the little church there. It happens to be famous for the Trompe l-oeil murals on the walls, a little hidden art treasure in the middle of the countryside, but that’s not why we stopped.   A church is the perfect place to pause on a weekday afternoon.  It is quiet and empty and, even though no one is there, you feel perfectly welcome.

I am not sure when we got into the habit of stretching in churchyards, in or near the little cemeteries at the sides.  I trace it back to the day we pulled into a little store for gas down in North Carolina and I saw a headline, just visible in the newspaper rack, that Princess Diana had been killed the night before, and I remember stretching after our run a couple of hours later in a cemetery and telling the boys about the accident and making a seriously banal statement about death being immanent and all that.  I may even have used the phrase “Carpe Deum,” but I hope not.  At least I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything about gathering rosebuds or garlands withering---though I wouldn’t put it past me.   And though I cringe a little (OK, a lot) at my decent into cliché, I must confess that this theme plays in my mind every day during the season.

We have stretched in the cemeteries of the sturdy little Presbyterian churches in the Shenandoah Valley.  We have stretched by James and Dolly Madison’s graves at Montpelier.  We have stretched at the little church where my former student D. Walker was buried after being killed saving people from a burning car on the highway.  We have stretched in cemeteries with tall marble monuments erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Daughters of the American Revolution.  We have stretched in back-cove cemeteries with primitive markers made of scrap metal and cement and whittled crosses.  (And, come to think of it, every day we stretch above the graves of two former team mascots).  You could see this as morbid I guess, but if you were there listening to the patter and laughter, you wouldn’t.

It is a perfect day and early enough in the year that we are not rushed.  The church has a fresh coat of paint which shines against the bright sky.  Behind the boys, tombstones rise.  The great-grandparents of a former student of mine rest near the grave of a man whose son graduated from Woodberry in 1919.   I study the gravestones while the boys talk enthusiastically about nothing at all---about less than nothing at all---as they move through their routine.  I am curiously incurious about their conversation, not even when laugher erupts, content to keep a distance and imagine the spiritual alchemy taking place, the exchange, the transference of unknown knowledge, the subtle changes down in the cellular structure of these young souls. 

 This is not a big “Et in Arcadia ego” moment, but I hope they have realized something without knowing they have realized it.  Perhaps this random stop on a random Thursday—and others like it—will be remembered in their lives ahead, wherever and however they end up.  Perhaps they will relish—even seek—such unremarkable moments of remarkable joy, and perhaps they will know such times to be fleeting and ephemeral and precious beyond any reckoning.  Is there any post or title or prize worth more than the simple satisfaction of sore muscles?  Is there any peace which surpasses the full emptiness of hard-earned exhaustion?  Such moments may be, as Keats put it, “…all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 

Is it too much to hope that they will leave Mitchells a little wiser?   Even without feeling wise or even knowing what wisdom is?  And isn’t that the best kind of wisdom anyway?   The kind which is too big and porous and light to be held in a few words.  The kind which flutters and floats and settles on you only in the moments when you are still and quiet enough to receive it.    This is the real reason I don’t say anything.  I could never in my life say something more profound than stretching a tired hamstring and laughing foolishly alongside the resting bones of those whose laughter has long ago faded.   A runner who is even half conscious of that receives a benediction with every step he takes.

Of course, even though our work week may be punctuated with such meditative moments, the weekend is brings another kind of moment altogether as we toe the starting line.   We have raced three times since the last Harrier(and how that can be, I don’t know)  and each week we have learned something—though the lessons vary from runner to runner.  One must learn to hold steadier focus, another, to take care with pace, another, to eat a better breakfast.  As a team we work on making the pre-race routine an easy habit which calms and focuses the mind while warming up the muscles.

Two weeks ago we hosted the biggest Woodberry Invitational in memory (perhaps in history) and the boys ran very well, despite the hard training they had endured since we arrived at camp.   Here are the results:

	Woodberry Forest Invitational
	Woodberry Forest Golf Course
	15 September, 2012
	Place:  8th out of 36 teams 1-5  spread:  1:06
			Place out of 307 runners
	Shelton	18:26	37th
	Liles	18:26	38th	a 40-second improvement from 2011!
	Singleton	18:39	53rd	In his first race on the WFS course
	Flory	19:06	71st	a 33-second improvement from 2011!
	Evans	19:33	100th
	Hammond	19:36	104th	In his first race on the WFS course
	Osterman	19:44	112th	In his first race on the WFS course
	Dameron	20:49	186th	In his first race on the WFS course
	Neath	21:38	235th

And last weekend we joined thousands of other runners at the historic Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg.   We were entered in the B Race, and even that proved a very tough challenge.  It was a hot, muggy day as well, and the course is a deceptively tough one.   We ran respectably but we were not particularly thrilled with our overall performance, but it provided a good workout and some excellent experience in navigating a very crowded race.  Here are the results:

Oatlands Invitational
Oatlands Plantation, Leesburg
22 September, 2012
Place:  24th out of 58 teams 1-5  spread:  1:07
	Time	Place out of 402 runners
Shelton	18:45	80th
Liles	18:51	86th
Flory	19:18	139th
Singleton	19:23	151st
Hammond	19:34	177th	a 2-sec. improvement from WFS
Osterman	20:14	257th
Evans	21:02	325th
Neath	21:43	266th	out of 600 in the upperclass JV race

And yesterday we ran in one of the many races at the Maymont Cross Country Festival, which draws teams from as far away as Alabama and New Jersey.  We were entered in the Coastal Division, and though the field was about a quarter of what we ran in at Oatlands, it was a very competitive race among some extremely impressive teams, including our rivals at Trinity, which blazed a 3^rd Place.   But I was very proud of the boys.  We had across-the-board PR’s, and we looked for the first time like a team with a purpose.  It was a good day for us.  Here are the results:

Maymont Cross Country Festival
Maymont Park, Richmond
29 September, 2012
Place:  13th out of 19 teams 1-5  spread:  1:05
	Time	Place out of 128 runners
Singleton	17:45	38th	a 41-ses. PR
Liles	17:51	41st	a 35-sec. PR
Shelton	18:08	57th	an 18-sec. PR
Evans	18:49	86th	a 44-sec. PR
Flory	18:50	87th	a 16-sec. PR

You will, no doubt, notice that we had only five runners in the race.  The others were back at school rehabbing injuries.   Despite all our obsessively careful precautions, the shin splints and patellar tendonitis arrived as predictably as the first frost, and just as Nick is finally feeling good again after a long illness, Peter has gotten a terrible cold, which held him back in the race.   When you have a team with so little depth, every injury or illness feels like a cosmic conspiracy.   Staying well---always a primary concern---is even more urgent this year.  

I hope we have everyone on the line next weekend when we race St. Christopher’s for our first Parents’ Weekend meet.