Reflections on 10 years since a near-victory for St. Xavier Cross Country

A distant triumph. (You'll find me humbly placed at the lower left.)

It's a weird thing to live your life by a TV commercial. But I try to. I'm thinking of the DirectTV Rob Lowe ads. In the commercials, the suave, normal Rob Lowe we know and love is a DirectTV customer. The ads contrast him with an unsavory counterpart, always a cable customer. One of these is "peaked in high school Rob Lowe," a washed out loser obsessed with his old trophies and clinging to distant memories of long-vanished greatness. (He, of course, is a cable customer.) Uncle Rico, from the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite, is also on my mind in this regard. A temporary caretaker for Napoleon and his brother Kip, Rico claims to have been able to throw the pigskin a quarter mile as a high schooler. He ruminates wistfully about his past greatness, wondering what would have happened if coach had put him in in the fourth quarter. "I could have gone pro," he sadly intones. To live this way--thinking incessantly about what was and might have been--is very tempting, very human. I'd be lying if I said I never did it myself. But, as I said, I try not to.

For a couple of reasons, that's been a little hard of late. I write this on November 1, near the peak of fall, my favorite season. Washington, D.C., where I currently live, just had its first truly chilly day. I reveled in it, feeling the cool winds and watching as they continued to tear the remaining leaves off of warm-colored trees. It's not just the weather, though, that makes me love this season. It's the thing I associate perhaps most with fall: cross country, the sport that dominated eight years of my life. It has deeply imprinted itself on my identity, and given me powerful positive associations with not just something as obvious as fall, but even little, obscure things. The smell and feel of cold sweat. The scent of wet leaves. Even the odor of a portable toilet, either clean or...not. These things, and many others, have marked my experience of cross country since its very beginning, and mingle in my memory.

And they were present in full form exactly ten years ago, in the fall of 2009, the year that I helped Cincinnati St. Xavier Cross Country to...a 2nd place finish at the OHSAA cross country meet. That tomorrow a very strong St.X team looks to add another 1st place finish to our program's collection has also made it difficult for me not to think of this part of my past. Along with the still hard to believe fact that a full decade has passed since that fall, a time of ups and downs, friendships and memories, triumphs and near-misses. At the risk of indulging in my inner Peaked In High School Rob Lowe/Uncle Rico, I shall now recall that fall, trying to think more of what was, and not what might have been, and to try to make sense of it from my vantage point in the precarious present. 

The regular season itself went well, helping our team to figure out which members would constitute its all-important top 7. They would represent it in further competition. I ended up a member of that top 7, though this was not at all guaranteed. In fact, the summer before, I had nearly quit the team, frustrated by my lack of progress. I ultimately did not (with some prodding by a perceptive coach), and what a stroke of luck that turned out to be. Over the course of that season, I established myself as one of four runners who would always lead the team in races, though I never did so during the course of the regular competition. Regardless, it was a satisfactory process, vanquishing long-held doubts that had begun to take root about my potential.

But the real fun began at the Greater Catholic League conference meet. Then held at Rapid Run Park, it had for decades hosted a furious and often unpredictable competition between St.X and its rival all-male Catholics schools in the GCL South: Lasalle, Elder, and Moeller. The hilly, uneven course was known to be tough, ending on a famous uphill. Yet, curiously, personal bests often occurred there, perhaps because claiming it was a 5k was a noble lie passed around the GCL. On that cool, sunny morning in October, St.X came to the line the slight favorites. But other schools were good enough that we certainly could not assume victory.

Near race end, my teammate Chris Hanson and I vie with an Elder runner for GCL South victory.

Not long after the race began, St.X formed into its by then customary four-pack, with Eric Gruenbacher, Chris Hanson, Gus Walter, and I running together near the very front of the race. As I began to sense that Hanson was having a good day, and that I still felt like I was too, I stuck with him as he and Elder's Josh Makin began to separate from the lead pack in the race's last mile. Up the race's final hill, I kept contact with them, losing it slightly in its final straightaway as Chris and Josh kicked furiously for GCL South bragging rights (overall rights having already been secured by Carroll's Chadd Kiggins). When I finished the race, I discovered that Josh had only just outkicked Chris, finishing 3rd overall, with me 4th in 15:59. When the race finished, St.X ended up the clear winner.

Post-finish euphoria as I approach Chris Hanson. 

The next week, at the Southwest Ohio District championships, a target was on St.X's back. Our coach told us as much a few days before, when we learned how the race, always split in two, shook out. It turned out that our race would involve a rematch with Lasalle, always a worthy competitor, and a first competition against Lakota West, quite strong that year. He told us, as though it were inside information, that these teams would be trying to upset us. And he told us that we couldn't let that happen.

Another surprise awaited us on the day of the race itself: the weather. I have never raced in worse weather than I did that day. It was mid-30s, windy, and raining. And it had been that way for days beforehand, leaving the course a muddy wreck, pockmarked by puddles. I got to the race's startline nervous...and cold. The moment the gun went off, my teammate Chris, lined up in front of me, slipped on a patch of mud. He recovered quickly, but it wasn't a great omen. It turned out to mean nothing, however. For on that day, something was different, indescribably different, for me. Less than a mile in, I was already at the front of the pack. I felt no pain. I giddily tromped through puddles like a child. I whistled, sang, and laughed as the race progressed, despite--or, as I have long concluded, because of--the adverse conditions. It was simply a blast. Only once since that day have I felt anything like it: In the last few miles of my 1st place finish in the 2018 Flying Pig Half-Marathon. 

Early on, you can already see the smile on my face. 

I spent the bulk of the race at the head of the pack, running alongside Eric and Sycamore's Nick Fry. But as the race neared its end, I left Eric, who had performed valiantly, behind, and Nick and I decided to see who had the most guts. In the final straightaway, I distinctly remember someone yelling at Nick something like, "Come on, you can do it! He's fading!" To which I audibly responded, "Like Hell I am!" and engaged my finishing kick. I wish I could tell you that it was enough, and that I rode to a triumphant 1st place finish. But I did not. I had to settle for 2nd (foreshadowing, perhaps). But St.X itself did not settle at all, securing 1st place once more, thanks to great performances from the rest of the team. We came in knowing others wanted to upset us, but we upset them by winning instead.

Having a blast. 

In hindsight, it is easy to say that the team was now due for a setback. Or at least that I myself was. Fortunately for the team, only the latter ended up true. At the windy plains of Troy (,Ohio), St.X came a victorious envoy, looking to conquer further. The competition would be fierce once more, and we were once again the target of many, even more so than the previous meet. Added to this was the historical curiosity that, at the time, St.X had won more State championships than Regional championships. All of this combined to make me, if not the team at large, somewhat nervous. And for reasons still not entirely clear to me, all these years later, I underperformed that day, ending up only the team's fourth man, 17th overall in 16:43. But the team was there for me in this, in more ways than one. Eric, Chris, and Gus seamlessly shuffled the team order, picking up the slack that I had left, and securing for us a first place victory once more.

Victorious once more. 

This was not the only way the team was there for me, however. Experiencing my first disappointment of the post-season, just after what was then the best race of my life (and still is one of the best), I was disappointed in myself. I felt I had failed the team, failed to meet the high expectations I now set for myself. Whether that was true or not, my teammates were there for me, supporting me when I was down, remembering that I had done the same for them, and might soon again. There is a special bond that comes from being on a team, especially--in my view--a cross country team, and I felt it more powerfully that day when I most needed it than I had on those easy days when I had perhaps undervalued it.

Eric giving me support. 

With another victory notched in our belt, we moved on to the state meet. At that now-distant time, it was still held at the legendary course of Scioto Downs, a proving ground of champions, a venue full of history, intensity, and unpredictability. Here, for the first time since the post-season had begun, we were not the favorites coming in, though we were considered one of several contenders. I got to leave school mid-day the day before the meet, to wear my post-season jacket to school, and to run the Columbus-area course the day before. I had no idea what was going to happen the next day. But nobody else did either. As our coach liked to say each week a new poll ranking the teams came out, the only poll that mattered was the one they took after the state meet.

I came to the line with an intense, nervous energy that defied my usual attempt at pre-race calm. But I think it was needed, for this, the last race of the season. I started out moderately, hanging behind my teammates, not wanting to burn out as a first-time competitor at this race. Somewhere around the halfway point, though, my deliberate momentum carried me up to my teammate Eric, who had up to that point been our leader in this race. We talked briefly as we ran next to each other. He told me to go ahead. So I did. I did not see any of my teammates for the rest of the race, though I discovered after we had finished that Chris and Eric had finished just behind my 16:28, 24th overall finish. Gus and my fellow then-junior Greg Sanders followed in the high-16s.

There was a time, after the race, when we did not know if we had won or not. Our coaches, counting during it, had reason to believe we may well have. For a few minutes, we waited in our team camp, living in a twilight realm of ambiguity. Soon, though, the announcement came. We had finished...2nd, to Cleveland St. Ignatius, our brother Jesuit school (members of whose winning team I have come to befriend over the years). 2nd place. We did not win. But we would get a trophy, and a chance to hoist it atop that vaunted podium. It wasn't what we wanted, or what we hoped for. But it wasn't nothing, either. We were all euphoric as we walked back over to the team that had been there for us today no less than it had been all season long, that team we were honored to represent.

Walking back euphoric to the team camp. I'm in the middle. 

Even though standing atop that podium remains one of my most cherished memories, I remember it only as something of a blissful blur. With a huge smile on my face, I said little. I accepted a place on the podium perhaps lower than I had earned, content to let the seniors have their day, and to let my deeds speak for themselves. It didn't really seem to matter anyway. When we stood there, we were one. Eric, who had led us for most of the season, without whom we wouldn't have made it anywhere this far, got to hold the trophy aloft with his own hands. But we were all holding it, really. Every member of that team. Myself very much among them.

A distant triumph. (You'll find me humbly placed at the lower left.)

I did get to hold the trophy myself eventually. I got plenty of pictures with it, in fact; my teammates were happy to let me hold it. But it wasn't really about the trophy, to me. It was about all we had done together, all those miles, all those memories, all those now distant and half-remembered things we couldn't even begin to explain to someone who wasn't there, and which we might now even have trouble explaining to ourselves, if we remember them at all. And it was about the team, whose greatness we had our chance to represent and embody, like those before us--many of whom were also in attendance--before we ourselves would have to step back and let others embody it on our behalf. We were but the temporary manifestation of something that had existed long before us and would go on long after us. The moment belonged to us, to be sure. But really it belonged to all of St.Xavier Cross Country.

They let me hold the trophy. But I didn't get to keep it. It wasn't really mine anyway.

I think often about that day, that season, that fall. My nostalgic recollection of it began before it even ended. When I had returned home, luxuriating in my post-race bliss, I caught Braveheart on TV, the very end, when the wistful Scottish theme plays as Robert the Bruce leads an army to avenge William Wallace. For some reason, it fit the moment perfectly, encapsulating all the happiness for what we had done, and the sadness for its all being over.

For it is, indeed, over. It has been for a long time, and will only keep receding further into the past, and into memory. Even most of the courses on which I ran these races have changed, leaving my own recollections one of the few ways to experience them viscerally still. At times, I will confess to an Uncle Rico-level bitterness about what might have been, or what has happened since. Failure to win overall, or to get myself on the podium as a top individual finisher, meant that neither our team performance that year nor mine as an individual have come to be regarded, as I had hoped, as a resounding highlight in the annals of St. Xavier Cross Country. Respectable, admirable, sure. But not as impressive as some of what came before and after. Now, our second place trophy sits collecting dust somewhere in a St.X trophy case behind some more impressive gold ones the team secured since. And I had no direct role in those gold trophies, something that had been my hope in getting 2nd as a junior, one of the reasons I was at the time content to let the seniors have their moment; I felt assured of my own the following year. Yet no such gold trophies awaited my senior year, nor any truly legacy-securing performance individually. In my darkest moments, I cast this second place finish, and what followed immediately after it, in a long line of personal shortcomings, accepting as my lot in life a seeming inability to achieve true greatness, to come close enough to it only to know what true greatness might be like.

But these are my darkest moments. And they do not represent the totality. Outside of them, I fondly recall the friendships and memories formed over that incredible season. I still consider my teammates from that year close friends; I still recall fondly that which we did together, from the serious and triumphant to the mundane and even to the silly. Those days represent maybe the best example I'll ever get of what John L. Parker Jr. in Once A Runner called "...the easy fond intimacy that sports give to young men in groups and that they would consciously or subconsciously miss for the rest of their lives."

While fondly recalling the past, I also do my best to live in the present, and for the future. When it comes to running, I did not end up as Peaked In High School Rob Lowe. I continued running seriously in college, and still do now after graduating; you can get a sense of what I have done here. In a strange way, not getting exactly what I wanted on that November day in 2009 has kept me out there, pounding pavement, continuing to search for it. I may never find it. But I resolved long ago to keep looking for it as long as I could.

So best of luck to St.Xavier Cross Country tomorrow, as it attempts to secure for our illustrious program another 1st place trophy. A whole season culminates in this race, and its chosen representatives are surely ready for it. But whatever happens, they and the team they represent should know that what they do today will not come to an end at the finish line. The miles, the races, the friendships, the memories, and the team will be with them always.

If they're lucky, they may even feel inspired to blog about it, 10 years later.

You might call it a...Life Between Runs.