A Road to Emmaeus

I have been running about twice a week since May. This would be an unremarkable observation, if not for the catastrophic left ankle injury that I sustained in July of 2021. A bad sprain suffered during a trail race caused my ankle to swell up like a grapefruit and, as later revealed from an MRI, inflicted long-lasting damage to the cartilage in my talus bone. I don’t have the same strength or flexibility that I had prior to the injury, and likely never will. Nevertheless, I am committed to doing physical therapy twice a week, which seems to be paying results. My runs have steadily increased to about 40 minutes, and yesterday I enjoyed what was my best run post-injury: a little over five miles with some acceleration at the end and no pain in the ankle. I felt at ease with the physical exertion, gliding along the concrete as I had done so many times before when I inhabited a younger, more resilient body. 

Now that my body has changed, probably for good, I have learned to love something that I previously took for granted. Running is a gift, one that can disappear in a moment. Over the past year, there were times when I wondered if I would ever be able to run again. I was told that arthroscopic surgery was not a guaranteed fix, and that degraded cartilage in the ankle sometimes never heals completely. Now, as I write this, I acknowledge that both this injury and the fact of aging have placed restrictions on the scope of what I can do. I will likely never run a five minute mile again or complete a marathon. Still, I am grateful for just the ability to run without pain. Reconnecting with running after a year-long absence has prompted me to reflect on my relationship with the sport, as well as the degree to which running helped transform me from a boy into a man. 

It all started two decades ago, in a very different world where social media didn’t exist, nobody had ever heard of Barack Obama or Taylor Swift, and 9/11 was still a gaping wound in our national consciousness. 

My emergence as a high school runner was entirely unexpected. At fifteen, I had not been in a public school for nearly four years, as my mother had made the decision to homeschool my brother and I after I finished sixth grade. My parents signed me up for track at the local high school, Spanaway Lake, as a way to get me out of the house and develop my social skills. Compliant as usual, I went to the first pre-season meeting and met the head track and field coach, Bob Loose. I asked him what he considered to be a “good” time for the two-mile race, which I’d heard was one of the options for the distance runners. “Under ten minutes, minimum,” he replied. I couldn’t fathom running even one mile under five minutes, let alone two in a row. With no reference point, I wondered if all the boys were running this fast (they weren’t, as I would soon find out). Just as intimidating was the thought of being around people my own age. I didn’t know it yet, but running would be my reintroduction to society, awakening in me a desire for companionship and peer acceptance. I would also find an aptitude for running that never showed in any of the other sports that I had previously tried as a youngster. Once discovered, my ability compelled me to push myself to my limits, obsessed with finding out just how fast I could go. 

I didn’t know any of this in the early days, of course. I started my first track season as a quiet follower, floating along in the pack with the other kids and minding my own business. I was content to be around my peers, but not in any hurry to make myself known.

“Hey, what’s your name?” asked one boy, in the middle of an easy run on the backstreets of town. 

“Daniel,” I replied stiffly, surprised by the question but secretly thankful that someone recognized my existence. 

Robbie and I quickly became good friends. He was a half-Filipino kid one year older than me, and I saw him as a mentor of sorts, someone who was charismatic and popular. He had his own car, a job at a local fast food restaurant, and a girlfriend. With my isolated existence, I saw all of these things as incredibly grown-up. I remember riding in the backseat of his car while he shuffled through burned CDs of various hip-hop artists, asking me for my opinion of one track in particular. I was appalled by the sexual lyrics and non-stop profanity, as my musical palette at this point was limited to the local smooth jazz radio station. I had only heard the word fuck a few of times in my life and had never so much as mumbled it myself. 

“This person is a sick individual!” I blurted out, much to Robbie’s amusement. 

Robbie lived a life that was utterly different from mine. I was repulsed by some of it, but intrigued by all of it. He welcomed me into the distance runner’s clique from the start, and we quickly bonded over team dinners at his house where we dined on his mom’s Filipino food, watched American Idol, and even brought out the karaoke machine so Robbie could serenade us with his favorite Michael Jackson songs. He also let me borrow his copy of Once a Runner, which I later learned was the greatest novel ever written about running. I remember thumbing through the creased, faded pages of the paperback, engrossed by the tale of an aspiring elite runner named Quenton Cassidy. Cassidy’s obsession with running was a mirror of our own, as Robbie and I were determined to lower our personal bests through sheer force of will. 

I improved rapidly in my inaugural track season, managing to run 4:56 for the one-mile race at the last meet after an inauspicious start. This made me the second fastest boy on the team over four laps. Thrilled by my progress, I plunged into a full-blown addiction to the sport. I logged hot and sweaty runs that summer to maintain fitness, memorizing all the twists and turns of the trails at Sprinker Park. The first informal cross-country practices began in August, and the boys squad fell under the tutelage of Mr. Zackula, a social studies teacher who also coached the sprinters during the track season. A former 800 meter specialist in college with a 1:49 personal best, Mr. Zackula possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport, constantly peppering us with stats and anecdotes of running legends, past and present. Witty and generally affable, Mr. Zackula was also blunt with the commentary and didn’t hesitate to call people out for underperformance. He was a zero bullshit kind of guy, which made him an effective motivator, at least for me. 

The start of cross-country season brought other changes that would alter the course of my adolescence. I started taking courses at a nearby community college while also enrolling at Spanaway Lake for marching band and pre-calculus. After years of self-instruction, with only minimal oversight from my mother, I yearned to put my brain to the test. In pre-calculus, I committed the needed formulas to memory through non-stop drilling and memorization. I saw every exam as a measurement of my intelligence, and waited with apprehension each time the teacher, Ms. Beckman, handed us the results. Nobody put pressure on me to achieve. Rather, it came from within, driven by a mad desire for self-validation as well as the recognition of my peers and teachers. The simplicity of numbers, whether earned in class or on the track, gave me a sense of purpose, as well as control. I could bend the numbers to my will – getting a 98 on the pre-calc test, or breaking 4:40 in the mile – as long as I poured in sufficient effort. Overwhelming effort became my default strategy for everything in life, and the numbers allowed me to precisely measure success. 

Two weeks into the cross-country season, Mr. Zackula and Ms. Beckman (the girls cross-country coach) loaded us into the team vans for a road trip east to Spokane to compete in an invitational meet. Traversing the Cascades, we left the verdant forests of the west and found ourselves in the middle of rolling grassland. Being out on the road without our parents was an adventure, and the boys would soon take full advantage of whatever opportunities for mischief such an adventure provided. Later that evening, we turned one of the hotel rooms into a scene of mayhem: leaning the bed frames up against the wall, we stacked the mattresses in the center and tested our manhood with a wrestling contest. The rules dictated that one had to stand firm in the “ring” and expel any challengers, with the escapades all caught on tape with Robbie’s VHS camcorder. I remember grappling with a senior named Gabe, feeling no small amount of satisfaction as I managed to send him tumbling backwards. Mr. Zackula was aware that we were up to something, but hinted that he would tolerate it as long as we didn’t cause any damage to hotel property. The wrestling was more memorable than the race itself: I remember pounding the turf of the pancake-flat, 2.5 mile course, managing something like 5:30 pace and feeling more or less satisfied with my efforts. I finished first for our team, displacing Robbie as the fastest runner for our squad. 

The evening after the race, the boys joined the girls to play some board games at the hotel. I believe this is the first time that I struck up conversation with an auburn-haired junior named Kristen; at the very least, this is my first memory of her. Our fathers were work colleagues in the US Army, and we soon became close friends. I admired her maturity and intelligence and thought she was the cutest girl on the team. I felt like I could be more like myself around her, and we talked about English literature and other things that the boys had little interest in discussing. It was a slow burning crush that endured for about a year and a half. From social osmosis, I gathered that a boy was supposed to “ask out” a girl that he liked, but this seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. I didn’t know anything about girls. What if Kristen wasn’t attracted to me the way I was to her? How would I deal with the rejection? And what exactly did people do on dates, anyway? 

I saw how easily Robbie seemed to charm the ladies, a type of charisma that I didn’t have. Hiding my feelings seemed preferable to stumbling my way into asking Kristen out on a date. Even as I emerged from my shell and made friends, the world of romance remained the stuff of mystery, as inscrutable as Mr. Loose’s sub 10:00 two-mile and perhaps even harder to achieve. Schoolwork and running presented relatively simple challenges: pour in enough inputs, and the outputs were all but guaranteed. Romance was something else entirely, a puzzle box for which I lacked the key.

After Spokane, I won the first dual-meet of the year against two of the weaker schools in our conference. Leading from the start, I raised my hands in victory as I crossed the finish line. It was a thrilling performance, but the exuberance that I felt then would be short-lived. Only a few weeks later, I started feeling a soreness in my shin, and a trip to the doctor revealed a stress fracture in my left tibia. I had no choice but to sit out the remainder of the season. The hard-nosed approach of overwhelming effort had pushed my young body over the edge, leaving me bitterly disappointed. Fortunately, the premature end to cross-country had the effect of leaving me even hungrier for track, which I knew was my true passion. Ms. Beckman returned as the distance coach for both the boys and girls, and I continued to make progress with her mix of brutal interval workouts and long recovery runs. I lowered my personal best in the mile to 4:39 and also managed 10:19 for the two-mile. The former was good enough to qualify me for the conference mile championship, even though I had one of the slowest seed times of the sixteen athletes in the race. I toed the starting line intimidated by the competition, which included a nationally-ranked 4:10 miler. I took second to last place, struggling home in 4:44. Despite this lackluster performance, I wrapped up the season pleased with my trajectory.

Heading into my senior year in the fall of 2003, I ended my foray into community college and decided to take a full school course load at Spanaway Lake. I wanted the complete high school experience: homecoming, football games, prom, and all the rest. I quickly made new friends outside the running team, mostly fellow nerds that I found in my two Advanced Placement classes. AP Calculus was my favorite course; it was my second straight year of math instruction from Ms. Beckman, and she made the mind-twisting puzzle of calculus not only comprehensible but even fun. The class had the added bonus of Kristen, who sat just behind me; it was our only shared class, and I always looked forward to seeing her at the end of each day. I had hopes that she would become my girlfriend, which I naively thought would happen through spending more time together. I envied those in dating relationships. I thought dating was some kind of right of passage, a badge of status that one could show off to one’s peers. One day at lunch, I proclaimed to my new AP friends that I intended to ask Kristen out on a date. They applauded my resolve, but failed to hold me accountable when I didn’t follow through. 

As for cross-country, our squad was far stronger than the year prior, with an upstart sophomore named Alex challenging me in both workouts and races. Hoshi was our reliable number-three man, an unassuming and disciplined Japanese kid who quickly became my new best friend with Robbie’s departure for college. Hoshi was a blood brother, even more so than Robbie. We were similar in many respects: both Asian-American introverts with a ferocious work ethic. In addition to running, we had a shared interest in trading card games, which we sometimes played on the bus while our teammates looked on with puzzled stares. I trusted and confided in Hoshi more than anyone else. In contrast to Robbie, I felt like I had nothing to prove to Hoshi, that we were social equals. 

Together with Alex, we led the boys to a sixth place finish at the conference championship, earning a qualifying slot for the district meet. Mr. Zackula was ecstatic. The girls, meanwhile, also qualified with a strong performance from Kristen and a junior named Jessica. The all-important district contest loomed, and both Mr. Zackula and Ms. Beckman were so confident in our abilities that they booked two rooms in Pasco for the state championship: one for Kristen and Jessica and a second for Alex and I. All we needed to do was place in the top 40 individuals at the district race, and our tickets to state would be secure. 

I knew I had the ability to qualify for state, given my fitness. The morning of the race, about 160 athletes lined up on the local golf course with the fog drifting through the frigid November air. When the gun cracked, we rushed forward in a swelling herd that immediately ripped up the fairways. I tore through the first mile in around 5:00, a blistering pace that quickly took its toll. The pain surging through my body was overwhelming, and I held an internal debate over just how much I was willing to tolerate. Succumbing to weakness, I eased up over the last mile. Someone handed me a card to indicate my place as I crossed the finish line, and I was crestfallen: 42. Off to the side, I watched Alex in tears as a result of of his 47th place. Kristen and Jessica had the better performances of the day, as they both advanced. I had prepared as well as I could have, had given it my all, and still had ended up short of my goal. It was an important lesson: failure sometimes happens, and when it does one has no choice but to accept it and move forward. 

The lingering sting of that race pushed me in my training through the winter, and I wound through the familiar trails and backstreets of town in the dreary, unending rain of the Pacific Northwest. While the doctrine of overwhelming effort had failed to get me to the state meet, I doubled down on it, believing that my final season of track held even greater promise. Mr. Loose selected me as co-captain of the boys team, and I went to work as soon as March arrived. I brought my personal best in the mile down to 4:35 and then lowered it again to 4:31, while also managing to shave my two-mile time to 10:01, a heartbeat away from the mythical 10:00 barrier that Mr. Loose had referenced two years prior. I knew that the best runners in the state were dropping times well below 9:30, so 10:00 didn’t seem as impressive as it once did. Nevertheless, I reveled in my fitness and in the glory of winning races. I was now one of the top runners in the conference, and enjoyed being recognized as a threat by other schools. I was a reliable contributor at our meets, racking up points with first and second place performances to give us an edge in the overall team competition. Late in the season, I clinched a closely-contested mile against our bitter rival Bethel High, outkicking their fastest runner in the final 200 meters to win in 4:33. I still count that as my best race, as the entire team had counted on me to win that one and I delivered. 

At the close of the season, I learned that I had qualified for the conference championship in both the mile and the two-mile by virtue of my seed times of 4:31 and 10:01. I had long envisioned breaking 4:30 and 10:00, and knew that I likely had one last shot to make both happen. I even thought that qualifying for the district meet might be possible, as I only needed to finish in the top eight of sixteen. In my final tune-up workout, I pushed through several 400 meter repeats in under 65 seconds and knew that I was in the best shape of my life. 

Lining up for the mile, I didn’t feel intimidated as I had at this very same race the year prior. I belonged among the best, and I raced like it. It was all a whirlwind of colored jerseys and pumping limbs, and I simply merged into the slipstream, my lungs strangely devoid of pain. Going into the final lap, I launched into the most furious kick of my life, trying desperately to close the gap on the boys just ahead of me. I ended up tenth in 4:27. While I failed to advance, I was ecstatic about finally dipping under 4:30. Ms. Beckman showed my my splits afterwards: 68/66/66/65. With this symmetry, I could not have executed the race any better. I returned the following day brimming with confidence, delivering a 9:52 for the two-mile with splits of 4:51/5:01. Again, I placed tenth. While in prior years both of my times would have been good enough to advance, 2004 produced a strong crop of athletes and I was simply outmatched by my competition. But this barely registered with me. Robbie, Ms. Beckman, and Mr. Zackula showered me with congratulations, and I had the feeling of having finally arrived as a respectable runner after a two-year quest of self-mastery. 

As my prep career came to an end, my college plans began to take shape. I visited Robbie a few times at St. Martin’s College, a small Division II school just down the freeway in Olympia. I had the chance to do a few workouts with the team, including one gut-busting session on the track. Robbie tried his best to woo me to St. Martin’s, emphasizing the camaraderie of the distance squad. But I had other ambitions: in the spring I received word that the Air Force had selected me for a four-year ROTC scholarship. I had my eye on Seattle Pacific University, also Division II but located in the big city. With funding from ROTC in my pocket, SPU offered a generous scholarship package that included room and board, and I made the decision to enroll. With my personal bests, I would be fast enough to join the cross-country and track teams, and I soon reached out to head coach Doris Heritage for pre-season training guidance. Another factor in my decision proved to be just as important, at least at first: Kristen told me that she was headed to SPU as well. 

I worked up the nerve to ask Kristen to the prom, which she accepted. By this time, though, the attraction that I had felt for her for so long had started to subside. I had idealized her, I realized, and I stopped daydreaming about her in math class. We did go to prom, but it was an awkward experience that neither of us much enjoyed. I knew that our lives were heading in different trajectories, despite the fact that we would both be attending SPU. Later, as college freshmen, we hung out occasionally, but I could tell that our friendship wasn’t the same. In short time, I noticed her hand in hand with a guy named Nick who happened to be the resident advisor on my floor. I allowed a twinge of jealousy to rise up inside me before quashing it, and I soon felt genuine happiness for her. I reflected on all of the times that I could have confessed my feelings to her, and sometimes wondered if things could have turned out differently. The next time I felt a powerful attraction to a woman, some five years later, I swore to myself that I would not make the same mistake. Ignoring some obvious red flags, I put everything on the line to win her heart and ended up getting my own broken in the process. Overwhelming effort, I learned, could unlock many things in life – a 4:30 mile, graduating with honors, becoming a military officer – but romantic love was not one of them.

My collegiate career was brief and unremarkable. Both my cross-country and track seasons ended with knee injuries, though I did manage to post a 4:10 for the 1500 meter race in the spring, roughly equivalent to the 4:27 mile from the year before. I didn’t enjoy my time on the team, finding it difficult to fit in as an awkward freshman in a locker room of older guys who were already part of a cohesive group. Coach Heritage, an Olympian and living legend, did the best she could with me, but the chronic injuries simply got in the way of my ROTC training. Ultimately, I made the decision to quit collegiate sports, throwing my energy instead into becoming a military officer. 

ROTC provided a kind of camaraderie that I didn’t find on the track team. In particular, I met another cadet named Travis, and we soon found that running was a shared passion. Towards the end of our freshman year, we had several head-to-head clashes in the 1.5 mile run, at that time a new addition to the Air Force’s physical fitness test. Some of the other cadets hyped our rivalry as the “battle of the century,” and I enjoyed the exhilaration of the competition as well as the recognition that my abilities earned from my peers. I managed to best Travis in our early races, but he surpassed me after that first year, and I doubt I ever beat him again. After the disappointing flameout in track, running in ROTC revived my love of the sport. To stay in shape, I took solo runs into the neighborhoods near campus: Ballard, Fremont, Queen Anne Hill. Sometimes I would drift further afield, to the Space Needle or even beyond, my feet plodding along Seattle’s rain-soaked sidewalks, my mind casting far and wide to all the places I would go as a newly-minted officer. I was a restless young man longing to, at long last, strike out on my own and experience the world. 

As one ages, the aperture of life grows to take in more and more. From fifteen to nineteen, I obsessed about running and could think of little else. The sport served its purpose. It gave me a strong will to overcome adversity and achieve my goals, and helped me to discover the virtue of friendship. It’s now been fourteen years since I graduated from college. The aperture continues to widen: I am now married and I can taste forty approaching on the horizon’s bend. I still run, and will continue to do so as long as I am able. My injury reminded me of how much I need the feeling of being in motion, of testing myself and pushing just a little bit harder to see what the body can do. I’m not competitive against others anymore, nor am I looking for anyone’s approval for my performance. I run for myself only. My speed is irrelevant. I run to prove that I can still do it, and the effort doesn’t need to be overwhelming to be worthwhile. Running pulled me from boyhood into adulthood, and it will, I hope, still be there as the vigor of youth gives way to the gilded sunset of old age.

As for the mythical key to romantic love, I learned only recently that this is not so mythical after all. Love does not require some kind of “secret” knowledge. Two and a half years ago, Sara and I found each other in Mexico and knew within two weeks that we would get married. Our first unofficial date was a 30 minute run in the city park before Spanish class. Watching her glide along the dirt path, our breaths synchronized in the high desert air, I thought Here is someone who loves the same things that I do. There was no need for overwhelming effort this time. We both knew that we had found the one we had been seeking after so many years. In the end, perhaps this is the greatest gift that running gave me: a partner with whom I can share the sport, and all the travails and triumphs that life brings. 

Post-script

Travis, his wife, and their two children live only a few blocks away from Sara and I. He took up marathoning after college and has now run Boston a couple of times. We still run together a couple times a month. 

Kristen and Nick got married shortly after college and now have several children. I found our old prom photo recently in a box of keepsakes, and paused to reflect on it all: our youth, the last days of high school, the air brimming with the promise of new beginnings. 

Mr. Zackula and I lost touch after high school; based on his LinkedIn profile, it looks like he still coaches track and cross-country in the Northwest, where he is doubtless inspiring new athletes with tales of track and field glory. 

I last saw Ms. Beckman at Hoshi’s wedding about a decade ago; she’s got a few kids now and still teaches math. 

Hoshi and his wife have three kids. He and I have seen each other occasionally over the years, though we’ve gradually drifted apart. Robbie and I talked on the phone a few times my freshman year when I updated him on my track progress, but fell out of contact after that. Robbie and Hoshi were the first guys to hammer the trails with me, the first to share in the “trial of miles,” as Quenton Cassidy describes his quest in Once a Runner. For that, I’ll always be grateful. Keep on running boys, wherever you are.