Another Reason I'm Weird: Shoeless Running

I've talked a lot about my old playin days. Like any good grizzled veteran (or someone who likes to think of themselves as such) I've got my war stories. Few, if any, are better than the day I ran the 2 mile championship at League Finals. Let's recap.

At this point I already didn't really like running, and the 2 mile wasn't my best race. Running the 2 mile was the safety school for competitive running for me; if I didn't make it to the sectional meet in the 1 mile, I would at least make it in the 2 mile. The meet that day was at Sequoia High School if I remember correctly. The track was nice; brand new I believe. The 2 mile doesn't start the same as sprint races. In a sprint, the runners are in what's called a "Staggered Start" where each runner takes their own lane and their starting point is slightly adjusted to compensate for the longer curves they may have to run. Distance runs on the track use a "Waterfall Start" or what I like to call a "Ghetto Stagger." Instead of running in heats of 8 with everyone in their own lane, they just smush everyone into the same race and have them stagger as best they can. The formation ends up just being sort of an upward slope, or a waterfall formation, as being on the outside only gets you maybe a step or two in front of the inside lane.

I was somewhat in the middle of the pack. There was a tier of runners that were flat out better than me; two guys from Menlo Atherton and two twin brothers from Carlmont were in that tier, but I think I had a chance to beat anyone else in that race. As the whistle blew in that race there was a lot of jockeying for position. You start out on a curve, so everyone is breaking inwards to lessen the distance on the curve. You're supposed to wait until you have a full stride on the gentleman next to you before you broke in, but this rule gets violated in the beginning. Everyone is so desperate to get away from the outside but not be boxed in by slower runners in the inside that there ends up being a lot of elbowing and such. This isn't intentional for the most part, but it happens. As I come around the turn, someone near me stepped on the back of my foot, flat tiring me. This isn't normally a huge deal; with all the bodies flying around I've had my shoe stepped on before. Unfortunately this flat tire was so severe that it caused my foot to come right out of my shoe.

This wasn't good. As my family can attest to, I wasn't the best about tying my shoes growing up; heck, I didn't even learn to tie my shoe until I was in second grade. I remedied this in sports though, and danged if that shoe wasn't a full triple knot with authority. That knot was specifically designed to not be undone by mortal hands. You ever fear you stepped in something en route to the office, and you spend the rest of the walk there scraping your foot on the ground in the hopes of getting whatever it is off? I basically did a more pronounced version of that maneuver the rest of the first lap. I probably looked like I had no business running in that race with such bad form, and it didn't help. I came around for the end of lap 1 in just as sorry of a state as I was in earlier. The shoe was a nuisance at this point. I couldn't let it just hang there for the remaining seven laps. I had two options.

1) Stop. Untie the shoe (maybe with a needle or something?) Put the foot back in. Re-tie the shoe. Keep going.

As we've discussed, this would take a very long amount of time. There's no way I'm getting that shoe untied in less than a minute, much less putting my foot in and re-tying it aptly (I'm still not great at tying shoes.) This just wasn't viable. I had to go with option 2:

2) Forget the dang shoe. I have races to run.

As I came around to the last straight of the first lap, my coach was equally as confused as I was. I pointed to the shoe, used my AYSO training to kick that shoe into the infield at my poor, beleaguered mentor, and kept running. I figured I've got soul; I didn't need sole! I ran that race with one shoe. Boy, let me tell you, I looked as stupid as you think I did. I could visibly see laughs from the side, and couldn't get my mind off of how dumb I looked. You know what the nutty thing about it was?

I ran my best two mile that day.

Call it nerves; call it undue stress from past experiences; call it whatever you want. The fact of the matter is that I ran my best race that day, and I've never run two miles that fast since. My foot finished the race looking like Mr. Deeds', and my coach used that tale as an inspirational/motivational story for a while afterwards when people complained of soreness. In the midst of all the intense competition, that moment will always stay with me. It may have been the stupidest I've ever felt in a race, but at least I got a story out of it.