One More Mile
Kallie Crouch
The sun beats down on all one hundred plus of us as we bend, kick, and stretch to loosen the stiffness in our muscles and the nerves jangling around inside of us like change in a purse. There are at least two other schools here wearing black and orange, a handful in blue and white, and who knows how many others wearing red. My girls and I stand somewhere in the middle—all five of us—hardly a team amid the sea of girls who’ve been doing this since elementary school. It’s the first race of the varsity cross country season, and the first race I’ve ever run. My heart beats so hard in my chest I’m afraid I won’t hear the official’s time warnings. My throat closes up, and I feel my eyes watering.
“Stop that,” a girl says. She’s our team captain and a family friend. She’s been running cross country for years. I’m swallowed by a mix of arms and ponytails, all four of my teammates promising me that I’ll do great.
I don’t. Every step sends a bolt of lightning up through my shin from my form (or lack thereof), I can’t breathe, I’m overheating, I can’t run anymore. Less than a half-mile into the race I slow from a painful, shuffling jog to a walk. I try to pump my arms, forcing my body to imagine itself in motion. Already, girls ahead of me are swinging their own arms, lifting their legs like horses at a competition, mane flying behind them, as they climb the hill into the woods where they’ll find a slight respite from the heat. Somehow, I get myself to lift my own feet off the ground again and I follow them.
I cross the finish line at a record-breaking twenty-two minutes and some odd seconds, beginning a long and painful love affair with running.
***
Running cross country was never a dream of mine. In fact, for most of my elementary and middle school days, I hated the thought of running. Lacing up tennis shoes and going for a run with my friends wasn’t appealing, but every Tuesday and Thursday I met with other girls in the third and fourth grades to run laps around our elementary school hallways. Girl’s Fitness Club preceded Girls on the Run for a single year before the after-school program dropped it from lack of participation. It saved me the trouble of having to sign up again.
After third grade, I spent less time outside and more time with my hand in a chip bag or clutching a game controller. I read, I spent some time writing fantastical stories about the worlds I wished existed, and I traded the stick-thin days of childhood for seconds at the dinner table. Then came the days of hiding in grey bathroom stalls in the dingy locker room beneath the middle school gym, unwilling to face the half-naked bodies of my classmates. They were so perfect compared to me with their summer ready bodies and legs thin enough to wear spandex. I hated the way I looked—chubby cheeks that bunched up when I smiled, turning my eyes into shrunken crescent moons I got yelled at for on picture day, limp blonde hair, blotchy pale skin, and the folds at my sides when I bent over.
The combination of access to the internet and exposure my classmates’ bodies and insecurities taught me how to hate myself. The boys I liked dated the same group of skinny, athletic girls they’d always dated—the same girls who complained about being fat and ugly, and if they were fat and ugly what did that make me?
Gym class fueled my hate. Every attempt at a chin-up failed after a few seconds of flailing mindlessly in the air. When the gym teacher pulled the chair out from underneath my feet for a pull-up, I’d fall from the bar immediately—my feeble upper body strength incapable of holding up the quivering mass of flesh that made up the rest of my body. I could do sit-ups well enough, but the mile brought on a new challenge. We worked up to it in increments. Our teacher expected us to run two laps in four minutes, four in eight, six in three, eight in four, and ten in five until we worked our way to the twenty-lap monstrosity.
***
My best friend in elementary school liked to play games. When she got bored of the tire swing and the boy she’d roped into pushing us on it, she’d find something else to do. She took most pleasure in tormenting her friends. She’d ask to play a game, brushing her mousy brown hair behind her shoulders, then ask for our ideas. Another friend said she didn’t care what we played, and I said I didn’t either, as long as it wasn’t tag.
If I’d known who she’d turn out to be, maybe I wouldn’t have clung to her for so long. Maybe I would’ve seen her eyes light up at my words, the cruel twist to her lips as she declared, “Let’s play tag. I’ll be it.” She gave us a thirty second head start.
I made a mad dash for cover, hoping that if I could conceal myself among the tubes of blue and green plastic, she wouldn’t find me and tag me. I pumped my legs hard and cursed my breath for being so loud. I hadn’t stood a chance in those thirty seconds. My legs couldn’t carry me fast enough. She was laughing as she tapped me on my shoulder.
“You’re it!”
She ran into the throng of kids moving across the playground—a spot of pink disappearing into a mess of shirts and pants all colors of the rainbow. I followed hopelessly. There was no way I could catch anyone, I was too slow and too chubby. I wandered around aimlessly looking for them with tears streaming down my face. A flash of pink would set me off at a determined trot across the playground only to find out neither of my friends were anywhere in sight. Maybe they were off somewhere watching me and laughing because I looked like the girl with no friends, crying because I was alone at recess. I never experienced kindness from her. It came from my other friend, jogging toward me with a hand held out in pity. I halfheartedly tagged her. She took off without another word.
I hated running because it was something other people could do that I couldn’t. I was supposed to be the capable one, the one who was smart and talented, the one who could do anything. In the eyes of peewee football stars and little league softball players, I was nothing.
Three years later by some scheduling magic, I was placed in an eighth-grade gym class with a ballet dancer who liked to run. She had long, dark brown hair she wore in a ponytail, braid, or bun on any given day. I wasn’t sure about her at first—she transferred to my school earlier in the year and I didn’t know her well—but she was goofy and odd and just the sort of person I liked to spend my time with. The only downside: she liked to run.
***
I learned to hate myself slowly. It began with noticing small things that I hadn’t before. The way my knees were huge compared to everyone else’s, the way their legs were shiny and mine were covered in hair, the way their hair always looked good in a ponytail and I didn’t even know how to put mine up without help. I found myself with a group of friends who hated themselves, too. I started to wear black and listen to people screaming into microphones and called it music, and I forgot about the people who really cared about me. I forgot about the happy girl I grew up with. I stayed up late talking to the people I thought were my friends and pretended to be sleeping when my dad came home from work at midnight.
The black-wearing sleep deprived version of me died within a year. I still hadn’t learned how to love myself, but I was tired of lying about who I was. I didn’t like the way the shirts from Hot Topic made me look. I couldn’t stand the constant lack of true friendship in a group of people like that—what kind of friend would let you forget who you were for the sake of being their friend? I started eating at lunch again, I started laughing, and I started running.
***
My newfound love for running happened slowly. I’d finish my laps in gym with time to spare, so I kept running. The feeling was similar to when I did well on a test or big project—I’d taken the next step toward being a great student.
Slowly, a few extra laps turned into running the required amount twice. The teacher kept a tally of the laps we ran and posted them on the gym wall every once in a while. Although I hadn’t wracked up nearly as many laps as some of the boys in my class, it felt good to have my name up there. I wanted it to stay. So, with my ballet dancing friend, I ran instead of playing games in the middle of the gym with other students. I drank water and I pumped my legs and I found out I enjoyed it.
The teacher started dropping hints soon after. I would stop to tie my shoes or get a drink of water while I ran, and he’d ask me if I ever thought about joining cross country. I hadn’t, I told him, but I had friends who ran. One of my friend’s moms had forced her to run the previous fall in an effort to get her to drop weight, but my friend had hated it. I was scared to try something so new after years of avoiding sports. I cheered early in middle school but dropped it before most of the other girls did. Before that I played softball and bowling. I went home each night after a successful run and told my parents what my teacher said about me. They asked if I was going to join cross country too.
I thought about it for a long time, and I’m glad I didn’t do research prior to signing up because I’m sure I wouldn’t have penciled my name onto the lined sheet of paper labeled “Cross Country” at the top. The athletic director paid a visit to the middle school in early June to invite students interested in fall sports to talk to high school coaches and sign-up. I went, risking a missed bus ride home to make a decision that would end up being one of the best of my life.
That day, the gym was hot, and I was crammed onto a set of orange bleachers packed with middle and high school students alike. My gym teacher stood in front of us. He thanked us for being interested in cross country and passed around a packet with our summer workout printed on the front. Over half the words were foreign to me, and I doubted I could run for twenty minutes straight, but I didn’t want to disappoint the man who was putting so much faith in me. I went home that night and started practicing.
***
Less than half of the students on the bleachers that day went through with cross country. We started in August with five girls on the team and ended in October with six—our foreign exchange student joined us partway through the season. We ran in rain and sunshine and climbed ski hills to get pictures with each other, and by the end of the season I proclaimed us as the most successful fall sport with none of the recognition we deserved.
I cut down my times by almost ten minutes that year and found out the hard part about running wasn’t running itself. Anyone can get off the couch and run—I did it. They might not go far, and they might not go fast, but they can run whenever they want to. The real struggle is having the determination and mindset to stick with it and enter a race knowing how you want it to go. The moment a doubt enters your mind, you skip a day, or you forget why you’re doing it in the first place, you lose something important.
My first season of cross country was complemented by shin splints, hip pain, tears, and the realization that I wasn’t going to be perfect or skinny. I wanted to be strong, and cross country taught me something I wouldn’t have known about myself otherwise—I’m tough. I don’t give up. I’m strong enough to run an entire 5k and come out smiling and alive. My mom told me later that my coaches thought they were going to kill me.
***
After that first year, I couldn’t get enough. I ran in gym class to get ready for my next season—I tried to recruit other girls to join cross country in the fall. They didn’t understand my infatuation with running and lifting weights, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t care if my thighs were round anymore because they could carry me for miles. How could I hate my body when it’d proven its worth?
I ran again sophomore year. I missed the adrenaline before a race, the pain after a race well run, the satisfaction of beating someone new. We lost two runners from the previous season and gained four more girls to take their place—we had a chance at the conference title and we lost it by only a handful of points.
Next year, we promised ourselves.
I couldn’t wait to run again.
My name made its way onto the sign-up sheet for track. Practices were longer and harder than anything I’d experienced in cross country, but I reveled in it. I liked to make my body hurt because I knew it could stand the pain. I didn’t want to be weak like I was in the past. I wouldn’t mistake my body for being something it wasn’t—something to be poked and prodded at. Somehow, I ran faster than I thought I could, and I wanted to run faster.
I did.
Cross country season came around again junior year. I pushed myself through practices with a renewed energy for running—we deserved the conference title. The leaves changed color from deep emeralds to the kinds of reds and oranges you only see in flames. I pulled myself through the ranks of girls at each race. Just one more girl, I told myself. Just a little bit faster.
***
I was running, and the sun was beating down on me as my feet hit the ground. I want to stop, I want to give up, but I don’t. I’m stronger than that. There’s no poison deadlier to a runner than thinking they can’t go farther, that they can’t go faster. I imagine looking at my past self now and telling her that things get better. Her body is so much stronger than she will ever know. The hate she feels for it is unfounded. I clench my fists a little tighter, I swing my arms a little harder, and I keep on running. Tomorrow my legs will hurt, but I’ve earned the pain.
I feel it in the blood pumping through my veins at one hundred miles per hour.
© 2020 Kallie Crouch
About the Author
Kallie Crouch is a young writer learning about the craft though the Front Street Writers program in Traverse City, MI. She's been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing with an Honorable Mention in the short story category and was a finalist in the Young Playwrights Festival. She enjoys writing nonfiction and poetry and finds her inspiration in the world and people around her.