Running in America

         

The Towson High School tent -- site of much socializing.

          For cheap entertainment, it’s difficult to beat a track meet. For the low price of $5 (around here, anyway), a person can be entertained for four, five, even up to eight hours if it’s a championship (more with rain delays!). That averages out to less than a dollar an hour, usually. What else can you do for that price? Of course, for people who may be at the meet solely to see their own children perform, that cost/benefit ratio goes down. I always figured that I have it pretty good, since Jo runs distance events. The 3200 meter, a 4 x 800 relay, plus the open 800 puts me at a good 17 - 18 minutes of viewing time -- more if I care about the other members of her relay team. That’s about 28 cents a minute, which is more expensive than a movie, but less than a trip up the Empire State Building. The parents of sprinters really have it rough. Imagine that your kid runs the 100, the 200 and the 400. That’s likely less than 2 minutes, which makes each minute cost $2.50. To make the experience cost-effective, you’d best enjoy it all.

Some of the crowd at the track meet Saturday.

There’s plenty to enjoy, and the variety is stunning. Kids jump, hurl, run, hurdle, vault. There’s drama -- will today be the day that he breaks the school mile record? Will she beat her arch-rival in the battle to the finish? There’s tragedy -- the hurdler who trips and crashes to the ground on the final jump, the sprinter who misses his last chance to PR in the 200 meter dash. There’s comedy, too, especially in the relays. Johanna tells me that at Towson High School, the track team NEVER practices baton handoffs. This fact could not be more obvious. In one 4 x 800, I saw Johanna fail to let go of the baton when the next runner grabbed it, sending the girl careering into the field, That runner got her revenge by stepping on the foot of the girl to whom she handed off. Then there was the poor boy whose baton slipped like a wet fish out of his sweaty hands -- right in front of the stands. I'm not sure whether the runner who was disqualified for refusing to remove her nose ring counts as comedy, or tragedy. It was certainly drama. 
       When our friends from Switzerland visited, we took them to a track meet. They were fascinated and impressed.

“And they say all American kids do is watch TV!” one exclaimed.

Waiting for the race.

Jo and Luc both ran track in Geneva, although there they called it athletisme -- which I guess would have been a more obvious name to us had we known that in England, track and field is “athletics.” In Geneva, kids found their own way to meets -- with parents or on the bus. Athletes were responsible for checking themselves in. If a runner forgot to check the right box and sign in with the official, too bad. No race for him that day. Coaches sometimes greeted kids as they arrived at the meet, but interaction was minimal. Like so much else in Geneva, running was largely an “on your own” endeavor. I watched Johanna win a 1000 meter run right in front of her coach. I don’t think the woman even said “good job.” I agree 100 percent that we Americans are over the top with praise, cheering our kids on for obeying the law of gravity as they go down the playground slide. Surely, though, there is a middle ground. I don’t think a little, “bonne course, Johanna,” would have gone to her head.

Despite the cheering crowds and doting parents in America, runners remain a fairly humble group of athletes. Towson High School has tried to aid in the effort to promote humility with the Great Uniform Drought of 2014. Simply put, we have more athletes than outfits. Usually, not all runners compete in the same meet, so the problem can be solved by turing in the uniforms after each meet, then redistributing. Sometimes, even that has failed and kids have to share at the same meet. Before each event, athletes are scrambling to find someone from whom to borrow a top or scrounging for a pair of shorts that fits. It’s bad enough to have to wear a shirt drenched with someone else’s sweat, but at one meet, the top male runner had to race in girls’ shorts that were so tight they looked painted on. It doesn’t matter how fast you run, honey, you still don’t get your own pants. 

American track meets are more social than Swiss ones, too.  Or maybe it just seems that way because I know the language. A person can come to know her fellow track parents pretty well after hours in the hot (or maybe icy) bleachers. For the kids, I think the actual competition is incidental to hang-out time under the team tent or on the bus. Ah, the bus. Before this year, we had only done sports at private schools or on club teams. There, while socializing during events is still easier than in Europe, parents still have to transport their own children. But with the start of our family’s public-school adventure, we were introduced to the wonderful invention of the Team Bus. This blessed vehicle means that only the kids, coaches, and one poor bus driver (who is, after all, paid for this) have to wake up at the crack of dawn and arrive at the meet hours before anything interesting happens. I can pay my $5 and mosey on in five minutes before the action begins. Of course, for me, that means 20 minutes before the action begins, since I have a constitutional earliness disorder, but it still beats the alternative.

As I type this, I am sitting in the car in the parking lot of Pikesville High School, waiting out a thunder-delay at the Baltimore County Track Championships. This situation brings into focus one of the major disadvantages of track as a sport: In the spring, anyway, it takes place outdoors. That means that a spectator (not to mention the athletes) might well be frozen, drenched, and sunburned all within the course of a season. Additionally, one rumble of thunder means that everyone has to go inside for at least 20 minutes. If anyone thinks that getting hundreds of athletes, officials, and spectators back on a field after a rain delay is a quick process, think again. But my cost-per-minute is dropping every time the clock ticks.

They finished the race right before the thunder started.