Back to the Future

Occasionally living in the past is a good thing. It is nice to remember what you’ve done and to be proud of past accomplishments. It is great to get together with folks who knew you “when”. Falling comfortably back into the old days, even for an all too brief weekend is a wonderful way to recharge the batteries.

I had the opportunity to literally and figuratively step back in time this weekend. My college roommate was inducted into our school’s athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday and my wife and I headed to Colonial Williamsburg to attend. The College of William and Mary at springtime is one of the more glorious places to be. The flowers bloom a little earlier, the air a bit warmer as a sleepy tourist town re-awakens. Shelly and I got there early, in time to run a few of the old routes that used to be my days and ways. I probably bored the heck out of her, recounting old stories of teammates and some of the silliness that occurs when you pack 35 fit and (generally) focused distance runners into a recreated colonial town. Sometimes you had to make your own fun given the surroundings.

As with many of the runs from campus, we started down the main colonial drag, D.O.G. Street. Per usual, the streets were crowded with school groups and tourists eager to soak in the atmosphere. Some of the more memorable moments of my college career occurred on this street, warming up and cooling down for races and workouts. [BEGIN FLASHBACK] There is always a brave child who wants to impress his or her schoolmates by yelling at the passing runners (runners are cowardly by nature, right? I mean, they are running away!). Each thought they were being original when yelling, “faster, faster” or “Run Forest Run”, not realizing that we had heard this hundreds of times. The one comment that ever stopped us in our tracks (figuratively, we kept running) was while cooling down from a long session of 1ks on the track. Several of us scholar-athletes were making the usual loop, shirts off, happy to be done with the workout. We could see the kid, probably 10 years old, get the wild eyes, inspiration brewing in his little skull. He popped off with, “How are you going to get girls with chests like that?” Academic All-Americans, Monroe scholars and valedictorians among the 15 of us and what could we respond with? Certainly it would be witty and slightly cutting sarcasm. Nope, the best we could manage was a hurtful “shut up”. It was a sad day for academia. [END FLASHBACK]

The weekend was a wonderful time to celebrate the career of my former teammate. He was a three time all-American at the 800m event and is currently a lawyer in NYC. Several of our old teammates showed up as well; we had a great time reminiscing and reconnecting with old friends. We even got to see the current team members hammer a workout on the track. It was as if everything came full circle. Here were the young, bright and talented athletes of the present lapping a track that also contains our blood, sweat and tears. The current team members were just as focused and driven as we had been at that time. They were polite enough to listen to our stories, just as we had done when alumni visited. My hope for them is that, in 15 years time, they also get to come back and experience the feelings and memories of a weekend in the past.