to all my running buddies

Running is, technically, an individual sport. There is no passing of a ball, no sharing of plays, and no designated positions. There are, however, anchors and pacers, pack strategy, and a baton in some cases. And regardless of whether or not those things are present, you are on a team.

Running is then, technically, a team sport.

To run your best race, you need to have familiar faces on the line with you. You have to have your close friends near the bend cheering for you on the home stretch the last two hundred meters of your sixteen hundred. Your teammates are the ones that push you on your runs and during your races. They are the ones that hug you when you’re sobbing after a bad race or hugging you because you just set your dream personal record.

Having been on cross country and track for five years, I have met people from all walks of life who all somehow ended up walking onto the team. Some of them had absolutely no desire to be there, and some of them found their passion within those gaits. These are some of the greatest people I’ve known and the lessons that they have taught me.

#1- Kat

I was in seventh grade. I had decided, after two brief dips in summer running, that I had no inclination to run. I was not a runner and did not want to be one. Kat came to my middle school as a sixth grader, and she and I were friends one day and enemies the next. The day she asked me to join, I suppose we were friends, but by the fourteenth day of her asking, she was running the enemy streak.

To make her stop, I went with her to practice. I don’t remember it, but I will bet you we walked.

The last race that year, her and I fought it out the last two hundred meters of a race. I didn’t think I was faster than her, I didn’t think that I was faster than anyone at that point, but my sprint beat hers. It was the day that I realized I could be a runner if I wanted to, even though I didn’t really push myself until later.

She quit running when she went into high school, and she swims and plays polo. We’re going to the same college next year. She wants to be a teacher.

Kat taught me to try something, even when you think you’ll hate it. Because you might end up loving it. It might end up being the thing that gets you up in the morning.

#2- Tay

When I went to that seventh-grade summer practice, I dragged Taylor with me. She refused to write her name down or leave any record that she was there. She wanted to do track and sprint, and she claimed she would never do distance running.

She was forced into the 800 by our coach, and then ended up coming to distance camp with me the next year. She complained, but I knew she loved it as much as I did. She was varsity her first race and ended up being a top-five finisher for our middle school.

She was running varsity by her sophomore year.

At the sectional meet this year, I had found her after her race and talked to her because despite having become part of different worlds, we still somehow shared this common bond of being runners even though she was ranked and I was bottom of the splits list. And she had turned to the person who had asked her if she needed anything and said, “I have her and water, I have all I need.” I saw her at a track meet last week, and I was there to witness her break six for the first time.

Taylor taught me that pure talent will get you far.

#3- Alyss

During my years of braces and bad hair crimping, I was not the slowest runner at my middle school. Most days I was faster than Kat, and the other runner in my grade Alyss. Looking back I give her so much credit for sticking out what was probably the most painful experience.

She is the prime example of the person who dedicated herself to a sport to watch it open up all of the doors for her. She went from running more than ten minutes a mile to running a 21 minute 3 mile. She went from a ten-minute mile to a six-flat mile. That may not be a state qualifier, but it’s undoubtedly something to be proud of.

I attached myself to her at the hip when we to high school because she was the only one who went to the same school as me. All of my non-runner friends had gone with Tay and Kat to the other high school, and I was a terrified freshman. She usually nodded, one earbud in, probably wanting to punch me out.

When she told me she couldn’t run track with me that year, I was heartbroken. Who was I supposed to run with? I didn’t know much of what happened at the time, but she disappeared from school for a while and I wasn’t one of the people she wanted to confide in, even though I stood there ready for her if she needed me. She didn’t really talk to me after that, we coexisted and she seemed to be doing better. She came back and ran until she was varsity. She seemed to hate me, and I wasn’t unsure as to why because I hadn’t done anything as far as I knew.

We started running together again senior year track season. I was a little uneasy because she seemed to throw spears whenever I was in close proximity, but she seemed to like having me around again. When she invited me to her letter of intent signing to run D3 xc and track, I thought that maybe she’d realized that I had always been there and that I would always be that thirteen-year-old girl with braces standing at the finish waiting for her in the crappy middle school uniform and begging her not to let me be last in the race because I’d hit the wall.

I’ll always support her because she’s my original running buddy. She’s the one person who is still with me, despite going our separate ways, and has been with me since the beginning of my running journey.

Alyssa taught me that while pure talent will get you far, hard work will get you even farther.

#4- Jill

Looking back, I realize how each person gave me one push to where I am today. Kat got me on the team, Tay got me running, Alyssa kept me going into high school, and Jill got me to stop floating and start pushing. There were other factors feeding into the fact that I wasn’t running my best. There was a lot going on. Family issues. Friend drama. The kinds of things that eat at your mentality and tell you “you can’t” instead of “you can”.

Coming off of a crap junior year, I went into senior year hopeful that things would be different. One of my track friends came to cross country, and that was when we became really close. Jill was fast, she was smart, pretty, talented, all of the things you want to be as a teen. But instead of nurturing that talent, she chose to run with me, to push me to keep myself going on runs when she was easily bopping along.

She is the prime reason that any seconds and minutes came off of my times that senior year. I owe it all to her and thank her for that every day. I was running with my friends instead of watching them sprint by me and just wishing that I could be with them, as I had done for the majority of high school.

She found something that made her want to run, and it was then that the seconds came flying off of her mile time. She was finally happy. She was happy, and so I was happy for her.

I plan on forcing her to do club running at the University we are both going to next year in hopes of keeping our bond that is running alive.

Jill taught me to push myself to be better and to always keep going even when I'd rather take a nap on the track.

Over these last five years, I have had a lot of running buddies. Some drug addicts. Some future politicians. People have confided in me their stories of being assaulted while on runs. Some of them quit after one week because they didn’t like not being ‘good’ without practice. They didn’t feel the magic within the strides. Each and every one of my running buddies taught me something about who I am and what it means to be a runner.

To all my running buddies, thank you for running through track and life with me.

- Stephanie Tan (@stephtangoo)