RUNNING SCARED

"Yo Bosom Buddy Beatty, check out that dude across the hall" commands my freshman roommate at the University of Louisville. 

"Yee f---in goints!" I exclaim in my native pigeon Sicilian from growing up in Bound Brook, New Jersey. "That's who will be chasing me?"

__________

I was a walk-on about to try out for flanker on Coach Vince Gibson's football team. My 4.4 forty yard dash speed coupled with football grit as a high-school halfback put me in the running for a roster spot. 

That dude was Otis Wilson, a redshirt Syracuse transfer who would become an All-American linebacker, not to mention an All-Pro member of the 1985 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears. As a 6'2" 220 pound freshman, Otis could already bench press 350, squat 500, and run just a 10th of a second slower than me. 

___________

"That's a real pissa" laughs my roommate from Oyster Bay, Long Island.

"When does Fall baseball start?" I ask but had already decided to try to steal bases instead of catch passes.

HANKIE SPANKY

"23 trap on two, and put that snot rag away" calls the Bound Brook High School quarterback to the huddle in general and me in particular.




"Bwake" I respond with the rest of the offense while stuffing the dripping handkerchief back under the red belt of my white away pants.

___________

There was something about eleven big uglies chasing me that made my nose run too. The first two games at halfback had been miserable affairs, hardly able to breathe with a plastic mouthpiece, stuffy nose, and post-nasal faucet. Throw in a few face plants and and I was a slobbery mess. 

With an Appalachian mother and pharmacist big brother, I should have been able to find some relief for games. But I didn't talk much, she was reduced to Vick's Vaporub by the move to New Jersey, and he was preoccupied by a business and two young sons. So I became the only known football player in history to carry a hankie in games.

___________

"Down-Set-Hike-Hike" launched us toward the left side of the line. As planned, the defense followed. 

After two steps, our left guard Karpy and I cut back to the right as I took the handoff and tucked the ball into my right arm. He barreled into the pursuing linebacker, knocking him back as I cut hard behind Karpy into a wide-open field, sprinting untouched for a 60-yard touchdown.

"Way to go, Bates" cheered Coach K, slapping my bottom as I jogged off the field.

"Thags" I smiled, pulling out my handkerchief for another blow.

GOING MINIMALIST

"Listen to your feet" was the lesson I was trying to learn after reading Born To Run, Christopher McDougall's groundbreaking book on barefoot running. 

_______________

Life had just taken a minimalist turn in the hot early summer of 2010 when my two teenagers decided to have only one home in the looming divorce settlement. Naturally, that would be where they were already living with my soon-to-be ex-wife in the house we had built a few years before. The three bedroom rental I had created for the kids was suddenly superfluous, so it was time to downsize. Going native in footwear seemed in the spirit of that change. It also made good biomechanical sense that the legs and back should respond to foot sensations by automatically adjusting into a more stable long distance posture.

_______________

"Don't run on gravel" was the first lesson, sent after three runs in my new minimalist shoes on the shady and cool Greenbrier River Trail, the only level surface besides a track in southeastern West Virginia.

"Don't run on hills" was next, learned after two weeks of sore balls from uphill leans and soles from downhill slaps on the steaming blacktop around our little town of Lewisburg.

"Don't go past five miles" came after another month of letting my legs adapt to the painful sensations coming from my feet after long sunset runs on state forest trails or country roads.

After a summer's trial of barefoot running, it was time to get the larger message: A 50-year-old body sometimes needs a cushioned landing.

GETTING LUCKY

"Are those them?" asked big Sam Jordan, reaching up to touch the stiff red polyester shorts hanging from a hook in my locker before a Randolph-Macon College football game.






The big defensive tackle was the last of a half dozen guys shuffling past to receive the blessing of the lucky shorts as we dressed for our first Old Dominion Athletic Conference game of the 1979 season against Washington & Lee University. 

"Yeah, ever since my first good high school game" I answered, taking down and stepping into the shorts as the first item of my pre-game uniform ritual.

__________________

What my Yellow Jacket teammates didn't know was that I had found the red gym shorts on the girls sale rack at Efinger's after my first wretched high school game at halfback. I had run with the ball about twenty times in a tough loss to Manville, a nearby rival in the Mountain-Valley Conference. All the runs and subsequent hits by their twin Hynoski linebackers had made my jock rub my inner thighs raw. I needed an under layer, and the tight fitting shorts in Bound Brook High School colors were just the ticket, even if I did have to wait until no one else was around to sneak up to the counter for the purchase. 

In our next game at Ridge High School, the field had opened up as we moved the ball with power sweeps, short passes, and punt returns. Their all-conference halfback sought me out at midfield after the game.

"Keep it up, guy" he smiled, and I did just that as the new red shorts propelled us to three straight wins to finish the season even at 4-4-1.

Four years later my school colors had changed to yellow and black but the red short mojo remained, if stained and over-stretched.

_________________

"How were the Yellow Jackets so successful in the rain and mud out there today?" asked the Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter after our big win.

"That's a real short story" I thought, pulling a clod from my facemask and taking off for a hot shower.