Race #9: Mattoon

The moment I get out of bed I begin to stretch. I am taking my time. Beano didn’t leave the room last night til three. During the porno pow-wow I kept my pillow slammed over my face with asphyxiated attempt. During the porno pow-wow Beano couldn’t go four seconds without stating, look, he’s about ready to blow his load.

I don’t shower in the morning. I am groggy. I am not as rested as I have hoped.

This is the first time I have run in a week. My leg still hearts. I spend what seems like two hours bandaging it up. I take pain killers. My right leg looks like a turban. The gauze feels almost like it is truncating the circulation through my limb.

I punch the wall. Both the clock and smoke detector are still severed. Several wires are misplaced in the back of the television since apparently mid-way through the reception to the porno got fuzzy last night and Leatric screwed in a metal hanger. Coach is pounding on our door telling us that we need to be out in the van in ten minutes. I am taking deep breaths. I am focusing on the race at hand.

Peacock was the only member of our team who wasn’t salivating at eh screen watching porno last night. When I see him in his RAMS warm-ups in the lobby I ask him how he slept last night.

“Best sleep of my life.” He says, with an unassuming grin.

Before the race in Mattoon we stop at McDonalds. To get breakfast. Coach advises that we have money but we are to eat light. A muffin.

“And a cup of coffee. Coffee’s kind of good if you’re going for a run. Cleans out your system."

When we arrive there are fifteen disparate teams clad in blaring colors of autumnal leaves. There are schools  I have never heard of before. Schools with name like Cumberland and Neoga and Olney which has pictures of what look like albino squirrels on their jerseys. Schools with names that sound like they were landing sights for WWI aircraft. Names like Rantoul and Dietrich and Teutoplois and Mendota. There is a Taylorville, Herscher, South Holland and a Colinsville. Manual is the only school that has any African American runners, a fact that does not go unnoticed via Quaynor.

 

Like Morton the race is entirely flat and paved.

“It should be less stress on your leg since you are used to running year round on blacktop.”

It is a road race. I ran my first road race around Northwoods mall when I was 5. 

I perform stretches. Apparently after he left our room last night Beano and Tony got drunk off of cheap airline sample-sized one shot bottles of Southern Comfort Beano managed to sneak  out of his mothers liquor cabinet and didn’t get to bed til five.  They both are wobbling. Coach is looking at them with his stern visage.

The field is packed. There are fifteen mostly rural schools configuring their bodies in configurations near the start in downtown Mattoon..  Runners doffing warmups, bent over in geometric stretches, pogoing up and down in place, lightly shuffling through a warm up mile.  I am still not 100 percent. I am still not 70 percent. Taking last week off was the longest I have gone without running since fourth grade.

 

Coach is stating that we have roughly 20 minutes til start.  I whip off my warmup bottoms and re-gauze my leg.

I don’t go on the warm-up jog with my fellow teammates. My leg feels tight. It feels like is its own entity and wishes nothing more than to segregate itself form the rest of my body.

Coach looks at me.

“You okay Von Behren?” Somehow I can tell he feels like saying that I don’t want to run if I don’t think I can make and I don’t. I don’t want to go out and get two miles in like last week at the central Invite where I fell down and couldn’t move. I don’t want to be paralyzed after the 3000 meters and limp through the finish line.

I don’t want it to be like last week where fuckin Beano beat me.

The team comes back. I am putting on a façade that everything is fine. I spit. I pogo up and down as if I am safety-dancing to 80’s music. We line up and begin our traditional 100 yard wind sprints. Taking off I realize it is the first time I exerted my body in running fashion in exactly a week. I wobble. I am matching my teammates stride for stride. Fifty yards in I pull over in a wizened grimace. I paw my way back to the start. I stretch out. I extend my leg, re- ossifying my limb with gauze.

Hans asks me how I am doing. I snap at him.

 

“If you want to know I’m pissed. I still feel like I’m crippled and couldn’t sleep worth shit last night because ya’ll kept watching porn all night.”

Hans says that he is sorry that he asked. Something is not right. My  right leg doesn’t feel loose.  I perform a couple of sprints which I am only able to make 75 yards. I hurt. I shouldn’t be running.

I do another sprint with team.  I make it 90 yards when I stop. It’s like I can’t wake my leg up. I don’t dare glance in the direction of coach. I don’t want him to klnow I am hurting.

 

When I canter back to the starting like en masses with the team I am trying to hide the fact that I limp.

 

I stay behind when the rest of the team does the last wind sprint. I am stretching, forming a triangle with my left leg as I outstretch my right.

 

I am telling myself that I can do this. I am telling myself that this is my sport. I am telling myself that I can stay calm and do this. 

“Hey,” coach pulls me over. He shields his arm around my shoulder in the similar fashion as my father before each race. For a second it seems like he is going to pray.

“Just run your race. I know you’re in pain. Just run the best you can.”

I look at Coach.

 

I tell him that I will not let him down.

The gun sounds like it is whimpering from the top of the phallic snout. I get boxed in by two kids with what looks like home grown Mormon haircuts from Teutopolis. Immediately I trip. My right palm hits the gravel. My body is shaped like a linebacker waiting for the ensuing hike. The gravel stains my palm and I somehow, with legs slashing in a nest of vibrating limbs, do a one hand push up. I am behind Beano and Quaynor. I am pissed.  I pass them in three strides. Beano appears to be half asleep. My elbows and arms form blades. I feel a sharp pang in the bottom of my right leg. Part of me feels like I should drop out now.

 

I haven’t even gone 100 meters.

 

Instead I bite my lips. I can still taste the scent of heavily diluted coffee on my tongue.  I side step around three runners from Mt. Zion. I spit. I look left.  There is a group of runners from Herscher. Another from Troy. Gardner S. Wilmington and someplace called Trenton Wesclin. Hans is ahead. I am trying to catch him. We are two hundred meters into the race and already I am banged up playing catch-up.

I do an awkward hop. I am in pain. The elite runners are still jockeying their bodies for position even though the trace is, for the most part, fast and straight.  I get bumped again by a lad from Centralia who says excuse me three times in a row.  I go right.  Hans seems to moonwalk in the opposite direction. I am passing runners. Ahead is the lead pack. Directly behind the lead back like a cartoon caricature bubble is second led pack, a cluster of five. Peacock is running in that pack. He is perhaps maybe 30 meters ahead. For some reason the gnash of my palm hitting gravel in the feet of the race diverts my attention from the stinging pain in my leg.  I pick up my stride. It feels like I am galloping. My elbows jutted as I swerve into the second pack. I am directly behind Peacock. If I stay directly behind him and go as long as I can I will be in good.

Suddenly I am massaging my anatomy into a steady rhythm. After a tumultuous 600 meters I am locked.  My stride is steady. I am not breathing hard. I am not concentrated on the sting on  my palm. I am pushing myself. I am right next to Peacock. It could be the first race at Madison park where he chided me for lagging behind the first two meters.

Peacock is running is own race. He glances at me and doesn’t smile. He shoots me a look like I am over doing it, like remember the first two miles at the central invite.

It is a terse looks but it is still a look.

 

The two packs are separating the men from the boys in a big way.  The bulk of the runners are from schools that will compete in the CLASS A final at Detweiller.

The state finals are held every year at Detweiller park. All of the teams are fighting to advance to the place we have come from.

 The pace is way too fast. I am next to Peacock. There is a look of almost unbridled concentration blanketed with keen focus attuned to his lips. He has found his stride as a harrier this semester. He has found his game.  The lead pack is separating, keep the same pace.

I hit the first mile mark at 5:16. I am next Peacock.  We are on an almost damaging pace. In my mind I am counting steps. I am focusing on getting to the 1 an half mark without hurting. I am next to Peacock. The second pack is a stampede. We are jostling. There are limbs being tossed.

For exactly one mile at Matoon I am myself again. For exactly one mile I don’t hurt.

Like Morton I am on course to chronicle my fastest time of the season. Briefly I ponder that maybe I should only participate in road races that start with M.

 

I have no clue how the rest of the my teammates are running. Peacock is inching ahead.  

For a second at Mattoon I am back. I am Pippen to Peacock’s Jordan. Our team has a solid runner once again. For a second at Matoon I am back. I am sucking it up. I am flying. I am cruising. I am running with Peacock. Peacock is slipping through the apertures. He is skidding ahead. He finds the pocket. He has the lightest step. He is floating. Sometimes it feels like Peacock is a skittering agitated quill plucked from the creature bearing his last name.

I am running my race. Every time Peacock skates ahead I stay with him. I am not letting him out of my vision. I am reciting bible versus from my two years in Confirmation class in my head. I am reciting mantras about the Lord being my shepherd about how I will not want.

And yet I want it. I want to be fast. I want to heal.

Everyone who was holding their privates like NES Advantage joysticks is far back. I am not letting Peacock out of my sight.  He looks like a Dickensian pick pocket. He is ducking, wedding his way through traffic. I am following my teammate. I am following my captain. Somehow I am thinking about Jose. This was suppose to be the year he went to state. This was suppose to be the year he led fledgling under classmate showing us that it was possible. Somehow I am running for Jose and Coach. This is solely for them. I am using the quantum stretch of my anatomical being to say thank you.

Peacock is less than 20 meters ahead of me. We are under 11 minutes for two miles. I catch up next to him again. I am snapping on his heels.

For a second I think about Renae Holiday again. For a second I think about Dawn Michelle. For a second I quote bible verses as lustful thoughts reverberate throughout the shoreline of my every cell. For a second I see myself in that asinine porno that all my teammates were watching last night, at two in the morning, their lags welded together to thwart pending hardon.  For a second I see myself with both Dawn Michelle and Renae  and they are all alone and they are peeling off layers of their clothes while blinking. For a second I am inside both of them at the same time and just like I can’t run fast enough they are saying that they want me deeper. They are ordering me to penetrate places that are moist, that they are wreathing the lower hemisphere of their limbs kicking into my body. That their flesh is somehow transitioning into the flagged chute and that I can see the digits on the neon clock with two hundred yard let and it is 12:20.

The last mile I am running low on steam. As if a vicarious switch is hit,  a pain sears in my right leg, for a second I think about stopping. I push on. Peacock is getting further and further ahead.  I am sucking it up. I am counting my steps. I am taking deep breaths. I am sucking it up. I want to run faster. I want to thank Coach for everything he has done for me in the past year.   I want to thank coach for always believing in me. I want to thank Coach foe encouraging me to utilize my talent to the best of whatever ability I find myself momentarily endowed with.

 

I am magnetically affixing myself to Peacock’s back. I am not letting him get out of sight.  He continues to drift ahead of me like a buoy. I am hurting. I am starting to run with a limp. From a distance I can only imagine that my leg looks like it is christened from a prosthetic mallet.

 

I get passed by three lads with short haircuts from Trenton. There is a runner from some place called Herscher. From my speculation I am still in the top 25.

 

I am kicking it

 

Peacock is firing ahead. I have no clue where the hell he gets his kick from.

With two hundred meters left I am again getting passed. The Teutopolis home-haircut tandem  are scooting past me.  I am fighting. Part of me doesn’t want to relinquish my lead. Part of me knows if I push faster I am endangering my health. The big races are coming up in a week. I can tell from Coach reading my splits and looking back with a smile that there was no way he surmised I would have performed this well.

I have no kick left, yet I kick.  As I squint I can see Peacock being shuffled through the chute. I kick for what I have. I past Teutopols twin number one. I am lifting my legs higher. My stance is that of a future gelding fleeing like hell to avoid the imminent onslaught of castration. I am pouring everything out in the last do meters.  Teutopolis number two is five feet ahead. I do a semi swerve. I lower my left shoulder as if I am preparing for a tackle boomeranging in 10^th of a second ahead of him at the chute.

 

We finish at the same time.

 

My hands are locked behind my head in the universal semblance of surrender.  I spit.  I turn around and slap Teutopolis twin on the back telling him good run.

 

I look for Peacock.

Peacock flies. He ends up breaking sixteen minutes. I am behind his with 16:24.  I have kicked ass. Had I run t he time on Madison course vs Notre Dame  I would be the FROSH record holder.

 

Logtoto is in the mid-seventeens.

 

I want to scream at my teammates telling them if they weren’t so busy watching porn last night I could have gotten a quality much needed night sleep.

 

“Dave, lighten up man You ran a fast time.”

 

They  tell me I am back. I have complete rehabbed my injury.

 

I go lie down and grab my leg. I can’t stop wailing.

 

I am snorting up my icy tears.

 

I don’t know what’s wrong Coach. I don’t know why I am hurting all the time.

 

I am walking with an even more noticeable limp.  I wrap my leg up.

 

“It’s not broken. Let's just get you home."