For My Runners

For my runners

By Sara

Adapted from For my people by Margaret Walker Alexander

For my runners everywhere eating up the miles without pause: their meets and their jogs and their speed workouts and their ‘fun runs’, running their miles daily for an unknown reason, exhausting  themselves repeatedly for illogical motives;

For my runners giving their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe years, running pounding racing breathing panting sprinting sweating wheezing passing thinking flying digging deeper never fading never falling never failing and never discouraging;

For my friends in the heat and mud and snow of New York trails living eating and sleeping and Front Street and Main Street and Meeker and Round Top and Graveyard and Flood Wall and Cider Mill and Watering Hole and team and family and captains and coach;

For the dreary irrational years we went to practice to learn to know the way to win and the proper form and the people to pass and the races to win and the places to push, in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we were strange and abnormal and insignificant and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be a man and woman, to laugh and stretch and think and run like the wind and tell their tales of winning and perseverance, to chase their teammates and win the race and then collapse of exhaustion and cramps and dehydration;

For my runners coalescing at the start line at  McQuaid in New York and STACS at Pheasant Hill ready semi-organized anticipated and eager people filling the boxes and cones and other bystanders wanting scarves and muck boots and hot chocolate and gloves and snowsuits and wind-blown broken tents and something - something the runners want more;

For my runners striding faithfully spreading joy, being lazy, dancing to the boom-box, laughing at spaghetti dinners, resolute when weary, hydrating when preparing committed and loyal and enthusiastic among ourselves while the other competitors, who only think they tower over us, joke amongst themselves;

For my runners tripping and scrambling and numbing in the cold of abundant trails and fields and flags and spectators, rocks and stream beds cars and roads and competitors and friends, pursued and passed and elbowed and cut-off  by metal-hungry glory-craving opponents, surpassed by skillful stride and coaching and preparation, by better genetics and longer practices;

For my runners working trying to fashion a better way from losing, from trailing behind and being ‘out-kicked’ at the end, trying to fashion world where your own team wins, all the races, all the t-shirts and medals and their countless ribbons of participation;

Let the underclassmen rise. Let another team be born. Let our muddy spikes leave a trail. Let the underclassmen full of determination issue forth; let a people loving running come forth. Let a beauty full of sweat and strength of final sprinting with the convulsing of our lungs and our muscles. Let the races be won, let the fatigue disappear. Let our family of runners now rise and take the gold.