Quit Your Whining

By Michael J. Warner

17 May 2000

I show up at the track on a cool spring evening with my usual baggage. The problems of the workday. My boss. My job. My pay. The problems of home. The house. The kids. The lawn. The reasons I run. My diabetes. My heart. My cholesterol. Mid life crisis stuff. These aren't my best running shoes. It's too cool. They just cut the infield and there's new mown grass on the track and on the field where we'll have to exercise. You know, the usual litany of gripes and whines and excuses.

Then he came out onto the track.

Maybe he was eight or nine years old. Maybe it was a she. We couldn't tell. His Mom and Dad trailed him in his sleek new, three wheeled, wheel chair. He wore a new jogging jacket, cool black racing gloves and a crash helmet that was a bit too big for the little boy beneath it. As the coach had us old men and women doing the 200-400-400-200 reps, we passed him much more often than he passed us. His pace was slow. Almost torturous. His distances between rests were short. As pace groups of five or six passed him on the inside, all eyes briefly turned right to see the thin arms struggle to move the chair down the outside lane. 100 meters - rest. 50 meters - rest. Mom and Dad dutifully taking turns jogging slowly alongside the chair, murmuring parental words of encouragement. His head bent down on his chest in concentration and struggle.

He finished his workout some where in the middle of our allotted time slot on the high school track. His Dad wheeled him down the slight incline to the parking lot and their van. The few percent grade, that I didn't even think of coming up to the track, must have looked like a mountain to him. A barrier to be overcome.

Maybe the coach's words seemed a bit clearer after that. I know that I perked my ears up. I sloughed off the worries of the day. I made a point of ignoring my aches and pains. I stopped thinking about me and thought more about putting one foot in front of the other and doing it well. I could now smell the lilacs in bloom by the side of the sprinter's lane. With a new focus, I worked on form and stride and timing and all that the coach had taught us that evening. No, I don't run like a gazelle. But for the rest of the night, my feet had wings and my mind was stuck on the kid in the wheelchair and his race with life itself.

Quit your whining Mike, just run.

Post Script: The "track work out" was Monday night at Pittsford-Mendon High School. The Coach is Mike Reif. It's an eight week "how to run better" course for walkers to marathoners put on by The Greater Rochester Track Club.