Running one’s mouth

When our team couldn’t make it through 500 pushups, my cross country coach would laugh. And he meant every word of it.
I used to run cross country in high school, not because I particularly enjoyed running, cross country, or high school, but because the coach had forearms the size of baked hams and you just don’t say no to those kinds of people.
For those who haven’t ever run a 5K, the principle is simple. You line up. The starting flag comes down.
Then you race cheerfully up mountains, fight your way through dark forests, and cruise to the finish over burning coals.
At least, that’s what it always felt like to me.
You know how the TV shows Olympic athletes smoking through mile after mile, barely breaking a sweat, while hordes of cameramen fly after them on cars and bicycles?
Let’s just say that no cameraman ever struggled to keep up with me.
But running isn’t the only part of cross country. Coach always approached the sport with a holistic mindset.
As in, you will holistically do 300 sit-ups, or you will holistically be expelled. It really didn’t help that he was the assistant principal.
My school’s cross country season was a lot longer than other schools’. For us junior varsity kids, it lasted from July to November.
I assume varsity just ran year-round, but I didn’t know for sure. I was never fast enough to reach that hallowed tier.
But whenever we had to run 10 miles, varsity had to run 12, so I never made an effort to run that much faster, if you get my drift.

For all the struggle that cross country was, it had its great moments, too.
Once the police called the school right before a blizzard to make sure Coach didn’t send any of us kids out on the roads.
“But they have an important meet next week!” Coach protested. “If we practice when the other schools cancel, we’ll get ahead. Besides, it’s not that cold out.”
The boys in blue told him the county jail wasn’t that cold, either, and that’s where anyone suspected of child endangerment could spend the night.
We ended up having practice inside that day, which was honestly worse than going out in a snowstorm.
You don’t know what boredom is until you have to run between the history wing and the cafeteria for two hours. During that run, I memorized all our presidents out of sheer ennui.
Now, like the early presidents, my cross country years are in the past.
Gone are the days where I swam through mud, swung from tree to tree, and tripped over my shoelaces as I crossed the finish line.
But the lessons I learned and the memories I made are still there. Sometimes, especially when the weather is nice, I think about running 5Ks again.
Then I remember how much it sucked, and I go back to my potato chips.

Copyright 2025 Alexandra Paskhaver, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.