BH 11: Outrunning other oldsters

The California Senior Games are calling me, but why?

Let’s get to the core of this desire to compete in The California Senior Games, in 2026.

Blocks Fletcher / Unsplash

The two-mile relay has four runners successively race 880 yards before handing off a baton to a teammate, with the last teammate finishing the run. Three teams competed in this meet’s two mile, and Sandusky easily won. The scoring came across a PA.

I don’t remember much about that race, except that people really did come out for high school sporting events in Ohio. Sometimes Mr. Memory characterizes my hometown’s sports mania as a Sandusky thing, but there were definitely people in the stands of this Fremont Ross three-team track meet. Also, track was a much bigger deal in the culture. At any given time in the 1980s, the fastest human alive was way more year-round famous than Noah Lyles.

Then there was my half-mile run. The 880 was my specialty, but I hadn’t won a race since seventh grade. The problem was mostly my teammates, who that fall had been the core of Sandusky High’s Hall of Fame cross-country team. The Blue Streaks were a long-distance juggernaut, scoring was borderline impossible, and my sense of self as a runner was distorted. Sometimes I’d finish among our opponents’ top runners. On our team though I was just a scrub.

This warped view of my physical worth wasn’t helped by my I routine hard partying. Mostly, alcohol was the drug of choice, but I messed around with cigarettes and, of course, misused cannabis.

I didn’t sleep nearly enough.

On this last day of the season—in this last individual race—I ran with the front runners from the quarter-mile lap’s start. This field of competitors moved well within my range, and I really, really wanted to enter the class of SHS students who wore letterman jackets.

The race was pretty entertaining. Through the first lap I was out among the pack leaders. If my memory serves me honorably, early in Lap Two a little distance began to develop between the Fremont Ross runner who eventually won and me.

There’s no memory question about how this, my last competitive race until 2019, ended.

The kids who cheered and clapped as a second Ross runner and I came racing into the home stretch were mostly wearing track uniforms. The third school’s name eludes me, but their people were watching, too. This was a home meet for Fremont Ross though, and those students were loudest in the half-mile run’s thrilling finale.

It was a fight for second place. I was ahead, but barely. I was in cruise mode. Trying to look cool. As the finish line approached, it felt like I was in there.

Then, flailing and next hurtling, headlong, surged Fremont’s second-best runner. Coming around the outside, he dove past me. The race’s end was instantly upon us. And on the other side of the finish line, dude was on the gravel, writhing in pain, but happy he beat me. His teammates helped him up, with unbridled congratulations.

I acted like getting beat at the end was no big deal, like that runner-up was a fool for diving. Third-place wouldn’t get me into The Letterman Class. But there would always be senior year, right?

If I say “finish” to my children, more likely than not they’ll respond with “strong.” In them I try to pass on what’s useful of my decades-old baggage. One never knows when that last race is coming.

Some things only a slightly haunted parent can convey.

I lost more than a shot at letterman status that afternoon at Fremont Ross. Midway through the summer I cracked my head on a wall—an episode illustrated in my memoir—suffered a serious concussion, and did not compete for Sandusky High again.

In 2019 I ran that 5,0000-meter event in Laguna Beach, just to get back in shape. Later in the summer came my seventh-place finish in the Griffith Park 5 K. That I hadn’t accounted for rain’s effect on the park’s rugged terrain made me think I can do well, especially at my specialty event, the 800.

Something in my mental makeup has always told me that life is a game you try to win. As an adult it’s obvious that this is true only in my mind. Yet, I choose to use this illusion; it’s the child in us that keeps humanity interesting.