This morning, I arrived in Towanda, KS at around 4:15 AM. I put a load of laundry in the wash and began unpacking my travel bag, which had served as my mobile bedroom for the past few days as the Butler Community College track team spent some time in Levelland, TX for the NJCAA National Track and Field Championships. As I began emptying out that old black Nike duffel bag, I began to feel very, very empty myself. I wasn't sure which was more pathetic: the old, deflated plastic excuse for luggage, or the tired, skinny kid staring at it. So, I decided one more run in the pitch morning blackness, as I had done countless times at Butler, could stave off the inescapable dull ache of realizing something is out of your reach.
I know I hadn't had sleep in 22 hours, and probably could have used it. I also knew it was pitch black. But I didn't care. I strapped on my headlamp and set out at 5:00 AM on a 3.5 mile run. No watch, No coaches. No expectations. Just me, my favorite pair of running shorts, favorite pair of training shoes, and the cutoff t-shirt from probably my most significant achievement in life, the Pelican Run. I took out nice and easy, and actually started to get nervous as I ran by the cemetery. Not only had I just watched Apollo 18 on the busride home, but I was also uncertain about the skunky odor permeating from the field across the street. But I decided to face my fears and keep moving forward. That was when something came over me that I will try my best to describe.
I began to pray, to thank God for the two years I have had at Butler. For the coaches that made the pain worth it. For the teammates that made me want to be a better runner and a better person. For the reminders that life isn't alway fair, and that we have to be thankful for what we're given. That life doesn't go the way you always think it ought to be, but when it does, we have someone to thank for it, someone to share it with. And when it doesn't go anywhere near the way we hope, we have someone there to pick us up and dust us off and make it worth it to at least have tried.
Suddenly, I was alone again, without my fears, without my doubts, beginning to leave the ache behind. Without the back pains that took my sophomore season away. Without the iron deficiencies that played head games with me in high school. Without any of my questions about whether or not I could handle a given pace. Without my own biological lack of talent and screwy biomechanics. And I took off. It was my last race. I was back in the moment, racing for the 5000m NJCAA Championship that had taken place 12 hours before. I cruised the first mile, completely devoid of thoughts, only images from the very race I had watched that afternoon. The second mile I remembered every failure, every race that didn't go how I wanted, every race where I took out like a bat out of hell to try to make up a gap I had no business working on, every practice I couldn't finish, every time a pretty little distance runner had jilted me, when I was sure a faster man would have had all the attention he could handle. Every time a teammate let me down, every time I let a teammate down, every time I let my coach down, every time I let myself down. I began to work it. And I didn't back down. Not from that point on. I didn't have any times to hit, any watch to provide a time, any runners physically there, pushing me. But as I turned to sprint down the final quarter mile stretch back to my house, and as the sun was rising over Towanda, I was leaving Kemoy Campbell in the wake of my own broken limitations, sprinting down my first, and last, championship.
