Running Memories

This is another in the “Sunday Story” series.  There’s no politics here, just some stories from my years of running and coaching.  Enjoy!!!

An Old Jogger

I started running again three weeks ago.  I’ve run a lot in my life. There was a track career as a sprinter in high school and college. Then I became a distance running Cross Country Coach. And finally there were early, early morning conditioning as a track coach.  Since I retired from coaching, I’ve tried to keep my conditioning up. But a knee injury put me on machines for a while. I tore cartilage in my knee kicking mulch, it doesn’t get any stupider than that.  And for the past year and a half, from before COVID and right through, I’ve been on an elliptical machine.  That’s working out in a room, watching TV.

Now the elliptical has been great, and I stayed with a consistent program.  But when track season rolled around this year, I found the I had same problem as when I was coaching.  Three or four track meets a week wore my legs out to the point that something had to give.  Doing both was just wearing me down.  I took a break.

Back on the Streets

So it’s been three months “off”, and I’ve decided to try running again, on the streets, outside, in the world.  At my age I start really slow, a jog for a little more than a mile, trying to remember what all of the muscles feel like.  Running is different than “elllipticaling”, there’s more balance, more work for all of the little muscles that keep you upright whether the sidewalk is cracked or a root protrudes from the path.  It takes more energy over less time than the machine.

But the best part of running, is it brings back all of the decades’ worth of memories.  Sure I’ve run the same roads and trails for generations (of kids), but it’s not just the familiar places.  While I struggle to get my “mileage” in, I also am flooded with memories.  Here’s some of them.

New Grass

There is nothing like the smell of newly cut grass on a just getting-hot summer morning.  I’ve experienced that smell my whole life, but it’s all linked to running.  Whether it was the long run summers when I was going six or seven miles a day, or just a more recent excursion of one mile (and some change – working to get to two), hot-cut grass in the summer takes me back.  Summer runs with the Cross Country team or discussing philosophy with David Taylor as we jogged (well, he jogged, I was running pretty fast for me) down McIntosh Road. 

A million (or at least thousands) of runs up Watkins Road from the school, before it became all housing developments, when it was cornfields and soybeans and grass.  There was no need for “OPP” (on potty patrol – bathroom breaks) as long as the farmers were growing corn.  Kids would disappear into the “fields of dreams” and come back ready for more mileage.   

Hillsboro

Coaching at the Hillsboro Invitational, where the short-cut to the two-mile mark took as long for me the coach as it took the runners in the race. The course was mostly old farm fields, grass cut lower on the course but piled up along the sides.  The “new hay” smell was all over.  

Hillsboro had some great memories – cheering my best teams excelling early in the season.  And also some of my worst – it’s where I decided that I needed my heart checked. Running to the two mile mark it felt like someone took a wire brush to my throat. I made it there, but had to walk back and didn’t get to see the finish.  It seemed stupid to die in Hillsboro. I had a stent placed within a month.  The stent went in on a Monday, and I was running around at the Conference Meet at Big Walnut that Saturday, feeling great (though my Assistant Coaches weren’t very happy about that).  The doc told me I couldn’t do any more damage – so the stent got “field tested” a little bit.

Crows

And then there’s the cawing of crows early, early in the morning.  I’m not running that early yet, it takes me a lot longer to physically get going than it used to.  But I do have dogs (see almost any post on this blog) and they get up very early. So we are up, walking around in the very early light, listening to the crows let everyone around know that they are awake.

We used to take our Cross Country team to a Boy Scout Camp, Camp Falling Rock, for a four  day summer camp.  We put the kids in a cabin, dorms with bunk beds with two big rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys.  I was always up early there, to get some coffee going before the kids were awake for our 7:30 am run.  Walking from the cabin up to the Lodge to make coffee, I was always greeted by the crows, dozens of them, hanging out in the trees and a little bit concerned that someone else was sharing their hilltop.

And on really good days, the birds were joined by a herd of deer that grazed on the grass at the top of the hill.  It was a mellow feeling, a good start to the day; sharing the sunrise with the crows and the deer, quietly feeding away but always with one eye on the sleepy looking guy staggering up to get some “joe” in before the morning trail run.

Trail Runs and Deer

That was a tradition, those early morning trail runs.  Everyone stayed together, running at “sub Dahlman pace”.  It was just to shake out the legs for the day, nothing crazy.  But tradition was that at least once a camp we would “get lost”.  It really wasn’t intentional (they were following me).  It was always a matter of can we get “there” a different way than “the regular” way.  Sometimes it worked, but sometimes the morning run ended up a lot harder than it should.  Everyone always came home, with a story to tell, of a cliff, or a stone, or a road that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Speaking of deer, my favorite deer story is of a pre-dawn solo run in the streets of Pataskala.  I was getting the “town loop” in. That’s once all the way around in the dark before there were any cars on the road.  As I ran down High Street, past the historic Pataskala Elementary School, I sensed I had a companion running with me.  It was a deer, a younger buck, who decided I would be good company for a bit of his pre-morning search for flowers.  We went about a block together, before he realized that I really was only running on two feet, not a “brother” deer at all.  Then he headed west as I continued south.

Sunrise at the McGowan

While coaching I had the opportunity of managing the McGowan Cross Country Invitational for thirty-some years.  The last decade or so, it was one of the largest meets in Ohio, with nineteen races and over five thousand kids running.  It was an all-day affair, with the first race at 9 am and the last ending around 6 pm.  There were lots of folks who made it happen, with everyone pitching in to do their part.

I always got there super-early, before 6 am, in the pre-dawn darkness.  In fact, we turned on the soccer field lights for the first hour, so that we could see to work.  That wasn’t a problem for years, but then a housing development was built right up against our running course.  Nothing like field lights at 6 am on a Saturday morning.  But somehow, we never got complaints.  I guess they knew what they were in for when they were bought their new house.

 Our scoring was in the soccer press box, where all the computers and printers had to be networked to work together.  That was one of my early morning tasks.   But I always took a break, just as the sun came up. It peaked over the starting line a quarter-mile to the east, highlighting the dew in the grass of the field leading towards the soccer fence.  Sunrise is always a fresh start; whatever the day before had been, today was something new.  “Sunrise over the McGowan” was a personal tradition.  Then the running would begin!

Sunset on the Track

And there was one more track tradition.  The Watkins facility has woods and pine trees to the west, out past the baseball field, the woods where we ran most of the cross country course.  At the end of the hundreds of track meets we ran at Watkins, at least the ones that finished in the daylight, I would always pause long enough to watch the sunset over the woods.  

It won’t be quite the same anymore:  new home bleachers are built on the west side of the track and field, and the sunset will now be behind that.  The home spectators will love it: no more staring into the setting sun during football games.  But it was often beautiful and always peaceful, a good end no matter how the track meet turned out for the home team.

Sunset over the old Watkins Track

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.