If you are in any way connected to Rice University and you meet me for the first time, it probably won’t be long until you learn that I run track and cross country along with both of my brothers. Usually, this revelation prompts some variation of the question: “all THREE of you run for Rice? How did that happen?” There has to be a reason that all of us Thames kids ended up on the same path and stuck with it for so long, right? There is, but it’s not the one you would expect. My parents weren’t collegiate runners– my dad didn’t make it much farther than his “Corner Cutters” middle school cross country team, and my mom was a high school cheerleader. So how did we get started, and why have we kept at it for so long?
My mom likes to tell us that it all began when she would take us to school early as little kids and set us loose in the football field to get our energy out before class. I think that was probably more for my brothers’ benefit… but I digress. Officially, we started running in 2012, when Coach Jones let all three of us join the track team together: Davis in fourth grade, me in second, and William in first. Although track usually started for fourth graders, he knew how to handle small, squirmy kids.
We’d start in the cafeteria, devouring granola bars and fruit snacks until Coach Jones appeared by the door and told us that snack time was over (we were promised that if we fainted from hunger, he would run over and “pop a Cheeto” in our mouths). In practice, we focused mainly on drills and technique: A-skips, lunges, knee circles, going through the drive phase of a start… and at the end, we would drag our uncoordinated and exhausted selves through a few laps around the field. Then we’d circle up and go through his affirmations: “God is good,” he would boom, and we would respond, “all the time!” He had a whole set of these, and to this day when I see him as a starting official at collegiate meets, he gives me a wink and a fist bump and greets me with, “God is good!” I feel like a giggly kid on that football field again every time.
As time went on, running only brought more sweating, wheezing, and lactic muscles. While my brothers stayed on a pretty steady path all towards college, I had a few more ups and downs. In third grade, the air conditioned beauty and sophistication of choir lured me away from cross country. In middle school, it was the loud bagpipes, colorful kilts, and travel competitions of Scottish Highland dance. But by the time I was in high school, I had committed myself to running. Although I struggled with asthma and sometimes didn’t even finish races, running had become part of my identity. The feeling of having accomplished something hard before 9am and of enduring a hard workout surrounded by my teammates made it worth the pain.
Despite this commitment, I had no expectations of running at the collegiate level– my times weren’t good enough no matter how much effort I put into the sport. By junior year I had started to plan an undergraduate experience full of long walks, yoga classes, and maybe some fun runs… but somehow, I made it to Rice.
It’s the people that made that miracle happen. There is an incredible amount of power in community, and whether they knew it or not, they are what made me choose every day to get back on the track, to show up to practice in the dark, and to believe that someone else had confidence in me even if I had no confidence in myself.
I’m still running because of Coach Jones’s reminders of God’s goodness and unfailing enthusiasm, Coach Ramsey’s wheeze-laugh-inducing running form and penchant for old movies, and Coach Fabre’s extravagant and adventurous cross country retreats before each season. I’m on a D1 team because of Roberta Anding’s tough love and practical sports nutrition advice, and Lennie Waite’s pre-race visualization techniques and steadiness that made me realize it’s really not that deep. I come back to the sport every day because of my own commitment, because of Jim Bevan’s willingness to invest in me even if results are slow in coming, because of my teammates that make me love every second spent at the edge of death, and most of all, because of my family.
Yes, running kind of sucks. But the reason the bad never fully outweighed the good is because running pervades all of my favorite family memories. Every dinner table conversation growing up included running in some capacity: analysis of that afternoon’s practice, speculations about tomorrow’s workout, hypotheses about nagging injuries, and breaking news about professional runners or new shoe drops or team drama. In high school, when practice started before sunrise, we would all shuffle blearily downstairs and eat breakfast together, commiserating silently in the early wakeup. Saturdays were spent either on the course or the track, and on vacations, when the easiest decision would be to sleep in and avoid running, I was kept accountable by my brothers. We would stay up late at night researching the most popular or interesting routes for the next morning, plan running into every travel schedule, and become the most efficient tourists in the city– you can see so much more if you’re running past it rather than walking! My desire for another hour of sleep, my excuses to avoid a workout, and my complaints about lingering soreness never really stood a chance.
People are shocked that all three Thames kids stuck with running all the way up to college, and even ran for the same team. But I believe it would have been more surprising if only one or two of us stuck with it. It was the encouragement through the struggle and the shared joy in success, the accountability, and the way we were able to turn a hard workout into a new way of connecting that kept us going. There is an incredible amount of power in community, and sometimes all you need is a community of three.
