The Shoes of Baltimore (NaNoWriMo Day 4)

Just like with high school, Julie couldn’t believe how fast everything had happened. To her, everything seemed like a blur.

Just in the blink of an eye, he was getting ready to graduate.

But for Charlie, the time before he graduated seemed to drag on forever. In his freshman year, it turned out two of the guys, Jeff and Stan, who lived next door to him were on the team as well. They actually wanted to get an early jump on familiarizing themselves with the area like Charlie did, and they ended up spending most of their time throughout college together. Everyone took running seriously on the team, but Jeff and Stan were good influences in terms of their dedication and will power.

There were a lot of temptations to give in to partying early on even before school started. Late night gorging on pizza, and just laying around all day playing video games appeared to be one of the favorite past times of college students. There were upperclassmen on the team who were there on the summer, and they invited them over for their parties.

The upperclassmen seemed to be able to handle the partying and training. They always complained about how early they h

Charlie, Jeff, and Stan had a little more trouble.

They had all planned to run together four days a week and hit the gym three times a week, but that hadn’t happened. In the first week, they only went on one run and went to the gym twice. In the second week, they only went running once. By the third week, they hadn’t run at all.

After forcing himself for to go on a run one morning and feeling a little winded, Charlie checked the scale after. He had gained almost 10 pounds. He knew he also wasn’t getting a lot of sleep and eating poorly, which contributed to him feeling a little sluggish.

When he got back to his apartment, he knocked on Jeff’s and Stan’s door. “Hey guys,” Charlie said, still sweating from the run.

“What’s up dude,” Stan asked. He looked over and saw Jeff laying on the couch watching he TV. He momentarily looked away from the screen and waved. Charlie gave him a quick wave back.

“So I went for a run today.”

“Oh nice,” Jeff said. “We were going to go this morning, but I dunno. We’ve just been laying around and have been bums for most of the day.”

“Yea, it was pretty hard for me to get out there,” Charlie admitted.

“I know,” Jeff said. “I mean, we still got almost a month and a half before practice even starts. But this is a little lazier then I like to be. And I’m worried if I keep it up, it will make it even harder to get back on track when practices actually start. I will have to work to just get back in the shape I was in. It’s crazy how easy and quick it is to break a routine.”

Charlie nodded.

“Yea, actually, I weighed myself this morning.”

He was embarrassed to admit he was almost 10 pounds heavier and school hadn’t even started.

Stan was off the couch by this point and walked to the door. He stood next to Jeff.

They waited for his answer.

“It’s embarrassing,” Charlie finally said.

He really, really didn’t want to tell them he was almost 10 pounds heavier.

“Okay,” Jeff said. “How about me and Stan go and weigh ourselves? Is the scale at your place?”

Charlie nodded.

He led them out the door to his apartment. He unlocked his door and stood outside the bathroom where the scale was. Charlie motioned for them to go in. Jeff went in first.

“Ughhh,” he groaned. “So that’s a nice gain of almost six pounds for me.”

Charlie didn’t like it that he felt better after hearing that. But only slightly better. He was also more four pounds heavier than Jeff.

Stan took a deep breath before he stood on the scale.

Charlie obviously didn’t know Jeff before he moved up her for the summer. But he had the feeling that he didn’t look much different now then he had before the additional six pounds.

However, it looked like some of Stan’s weight was showing. When they were hanging out at the pool in the apartment complex on the first day, Stan had obviously spent a lot of time working on his abdominals. But when they went swimming two days ago, that definition had seemed to start to disappear.

“Crap. I beat you Charlie, but this isn’t something I wanted to win. Looks like I’ve put on a nice 13 pounds since being here.”

“Damn,” Charlie said.

He didn’t mean to say that aloud.

“Sorry,” Charlie quickly said.

“Hey man, not your fault. I didn’t have to eat all the damn pizza and lay around everyday. I mean, I was thinking I gained maybe six or seven pounds and I could just run it off before practices really got serious. But this is no good.”

Stan turned to Charlie. “Jeff knows this because we went to high school together, but I actually got into track because I wanted to lose weight in high school. I was chubby throughout middle school and always got picked on. Jeff was actually one of my few friends back then, and when I told him I wanted to lose weight, he worked with my everyday over the summer. Whether it was running and going to the gym or just taking long walks, he helped me lose weight and get more comfortable with myself. I’ve had a few back slides every now and then, but I’’be always been able to get back in my routines. But I’m always worried that when I put on weight like this, I’m just going to keep doing it. So I gotta get on top of this now.”

Charlie now felt a new feeling. Normally, he would have felt better that someone was a little worse off than he was since he was always comparing himself to other people.

But what he was feeling now was actually a feeling of togetherness. Like he was a member of something.

He originally didn’t want to share anything about his weight gain. But with how open Stan had been, he felt much more comfortable.

“Okay fellas,” Jeff said. “This is the plan. No more parties. The video games and light nights have to be cut out as well. We can play them if we got our runs in for the day, but we just can’t lay around anymore. And we should also be exploring the area a little more instead of just the party apartments. We haven’t even taken a trip to the campus yet.”

It’s possible that they would have got their acts together when the real practices started. But that moment led them all to hold not only themselves accountable, but each other as well.

And it paid off.

When practices started, most of the freshman hadn’t been keeping up with their running routines either. The majority seemed out of shape.

Even one of them quit.

Initially, Charlie didn’t get to compete in any of the competitions. He was one of the fastest kids on the team, but the juniors and seniors were just so fast. He always came close to beating them, but they always seemed to win out.

But the coach did tel him he was the next man up if anything happened for the relay team.

Charlie would rather have ran a full race and represent the team on his own, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Jeff and Stan were also stuck on backup duty. The coach told them all to be patient because all the juniors and seniors now who got to run on the races started off as freshmen who were just backups.

But Charlie didn’t remain a backup for long.

In the second relay race of the year, one of the runners tore his ACL colliding into another runner.

Charlie ended up being a major asset to the team, and having that almost full-year of experience under his belt had given him an advantage over Jeff and Stan.

The trio stuck around in Florida during their sophomore year. They had gotten through their freshman year, all maintaining their weight and in great shape.

They trained religiously during the summer.

They all got better, but Charlie clearly improved the most. He was excited to race against everyone. He knew he could earn a spot on his own.

He targeted the 3000 meters where 7.5 laps were ran.

But after the first day of practice, Charlie was surprised to learn the coach wanted him to do the 10,000. That would be over 6 miles.

Charlie had a great mix of speed and stamina, but he really wasn’t practicing for that distance. He had just been working on his improving his speed for running two miles.

He wasn’t going to pass this chance up.

He finished in the top five in the team’s first meet that season. By the end of the season, he was winning all the races.

Jeff and Stan each got spots on the relay team their junior years.

By his junior year, Charlie had his eye on the Olympics. From that year to his senior year, he never lost a race.

He got an offer to try out for the Olympic team, and so did Jeff. Stan didn’t, but he decided to pal around with them and help them train during the summer. He was going to stay in school to get his masters anyway, so there wasn’t a rush for him to figure out his life after running was over.

Charlie and Jeff moved away from the campus but decided to stay in Florida to train.

Julie visited him a week before his official tryout took place.