Runners set…
Excerpt from BLOOD, SWEAT & SPIKES
The following is a short excerpt from my new memoir, titled Blood, Sweat & Spikes: Running the Wetmore Way.
It’s race day and I didn’t know and I’m terrified. School lets out and the feeling is overwhelming my sixth-grade, 10-year-old self. Instead of trotting down to the field to warm up with the others, I turn tail and run home.
My heart beats hard. Jumping out of my chest. I feel like I may never catch my breath. My mind will not be distracted and the ground feels like it is falling away behind my heels. A vast chasm appears in my imagination as the earth cracks open a deep, dark hole behind me. Coming closer. Ready to swallow me whole even as I glance back to see what’s chasing me and see nothing out of the ordinary. But I know it’s there. My vision is focused to a pinhole. I see only one thing through my silent, overwhelming tears. Not forward. Just away. All I can do is keep running.
And no one and nothing can help me. I’m all on my own. All I can think is to get away. A mile down the road to safety. Quiet. My own space.
How did I get into this situation in the first place? I can’t think of it. I’m just a kid. Why am I scared? I don’t know. Fear of what? Embarrassment? Not being prepared? Losing? It’s only a race across a bright green field on a sunny fall day. But it feels like a threat to my very existence. So I run. And I hide. And I hope none of the others will notice me missing.
But Mark notices. And he drives his white van down from the Polo Grounds to find me at home even though he has other important things going on a mile away. He cares about me more than I understood. He talks to me. Listens to me. Convinces me that I’m safe, and I’m ready, and it’s time to go back and face the music I’ve been training for. I’m not sure what’ll come of it all. But with that little bit of outside confidence, that feeling that he believes in me, I’m game to give it a go.
That’s my coach. My teacher. My friend. It’s what trust feels like. So I wipe my salty eyes dry and ride the mile back to the starting line. Where it all begins.
At the height of the first American Running Boom, a small town in New Jersey emerged as a magical place in the sport. Tiny Bernardsville, in the Somerset Hills of New Jersey produced dozens of local, state, age-group, and national champions and claimed a place in the pantheon of American distance running. A junior program fed a high school team of boys and girls that claimed legend status. Before he was one of the best collegiate distance running coaches on the planet, Mark Wetmore was the young, ambitious, experimental coach of this program. BLOOD, SWEAT & SPIKES is one story of one of those runners in that town and the people who made it unique in the history of the sport.
BLOOD, SWEAT & SPIKES: Running the Wetmore Way is now available to order here >>>