Running (Very Slowly)

Although I participated in track in high school, I didn’t do much distance running until I reached my early 40s. It was then that I realized I needed to make a conscious effort to exercise if I wanted to keep fitting into my work clothes. My son, then in middle school, wanted to try out for the cross-country team the next fall, so we began running together.

I shared an office with a math professor who had been at CCAC much longer than I, and as I talked about running, he began telling me stories of the national championship track and cross-country teams the college had fielded in the mid-1970s. As I heard about the Kenyans, South Africans, Irishmen, and Englishmen who attended the college to run, I found it difficult to believe. The college, after all, had no athletic facilities for track and field, either indoor or outdoor. It served a predominantly working-class student body, providing vocational training and the first two years of a college degree. The story hooked me, and I started researching.

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