Date
|
Place
of exercise
|
Duration
(minutes)
|
123 steps(s)
|
400
meters(s)
|
Start
time
|
17
June
|
Orlyonok-Орлёнок
|
2
|
1:13.19
|
18:35
|
I did it. I smashed
my record by nearly 2 seconds. You might think that’s nothing big, but the
other teachers around my table in the cafeteria all know it’s monumental.
I have a video of
this, too. On one level, one could say that my penchant for making video is
like the onlooker who can’t keep himself from staring at the train wreck. In
truth, my form doesn’t actually look terrible: my strides are long, I’m thrusting my arms out
far is either direction, my head is up; a true professional running coach could
probably find several imperfections in my style, but me—I’m happy.
The happiness is
called into question a bit when one considers the other runner, Valya. Rather
than running at the upper limit of his ability, like I was, he looks as though
he is walking from his bedroom to the bathroom in the middle of the night in
his bare feet with his eyes closed. I’m wearing running gear, shorts, t-shirt,
tennis shoes—he’s wearing blue jeans, a polo shirt, and white sneakers that are
two sizes too big, with no socks. This lack of proper equipment, however, does
not mean that his ability to run quicker than me is at all damaged. I asked him
before we ran not to get too far ahead—I didn’t want to lose heart. He
constantly had to keep looking back so he would not trample on my spirit. He
played his role perfectly.
Valya is he male
camp counselor for our “team” of 27 teenagers. I am the designated English
speaker attached to the group. The kids can be heard in the video screaming encouragement—to
Valya. Several of them may have had the impression that Valya and I were
racing. The truth is that I should have paid him to be my pace animal. I used
him like the dog track uses a plastic rabbit. As I wrote here a couple days
ago, I figured that what I needed was some competition to inspire me to get
that extra second. He and I discussed that he was the perfect person to provide
this competition—we just needed to find a time in our schedules to suit.
Today didn’t begin
like a day when one would expect to shatter a personal record. The first
activity for me was a load of laundry at 6:15 a.m. Then we took a page out of
the army handbook—hurry up and wait. We felt the pressure to get ready so we
did our best to get up at 6:30, as our group leader, Valya, had stipulated. Like
a true aristocrat, he didn’t stumble into the room until 7:45. Then breakfast,
and a 6-hour hike into the hills. The hike was not strenuous, but it was surely
hot and sweaty. We returned to the camp about an hour before the camp session-ending
gala in the Palace of Culture and Sport (DKS), enough time for me to have a
swim in the Black Sea.
After seeing kids
and counselors perform spectacularly, I introduced Valya to the idea of acting
as my pace rabbit before walking back for supper. I needed to take advantage of
the fact that while our lodge is a 25-minute walk from the track, it is in the
shadow of the DKS. What’s more, now that the kids were with us, I imagined an
adoring crowd cheering me on to victory and a new, sub-75 second record. In
reality, the adoring crowd was cheering for my opponent, the rabbit, but the
record was realized and the four-year old goal was achieved.
When I finished, I
felt a new tingling in my ears, strangely. But the other soreness, in my
elbows, in my hamstrings, in my neck, and even in my fingertips, did not
appear. The mind has nearly unlimited power to make the body forget all
troubles. During the 25-minute walk back to supper, we fell in with several
other Orlyonok sub-camps. My spirit was famously buoyed to the point where my
usual conversations of…
“Where you from?”
“The United
States.”
“Oh, ho!”
…were many.
I wasn’t so
presumptuous to think that they would be interested in my new record. But
Dasha, from our team, played the role of the dutiful ‘good listener’ as I
regaled her with every aspect of the event.
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