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Last Saturday was (among other things) the UAA Outdoor Track & Field Conference Championships back at my alma mater Washington University in St. Louis. It’s been eight years since I ran on that track, but the track alumni have been meeting up at conferences for the last few years, and they planned a tiny alumni meet. Sprint medley, anyone?
News of the meet made me finally purchase that indoor cycle I’d been thinking about getting. I knew I wouldn’t get in the shape I’d ideally have to be in, but I could at least try to drop a few pounds. I somehow managed to hurt my thigh muscles the week before the event, of course, but nothing was going to stop me from running that sprint!
Nothing but a tornado, actually. Yes, the relay (200-200 (me!)-400-800m) was literally on the track (after the tornado sirens went off twice, and the lightning siren once) when someone got the news that a tornado had really touched down in West County and we were all herded to the basement of the Athletic Complex (lots of unwashed wet athletes in a small space, yay!) as the rain poured down.
So I didn’t get to run in a race. But I warmed up and ran a bit, and put on my spikes that hadn’t seen daylight in eight years. And I did warm up sprints before the aborted start, and I remembered how good it felt to run down that track, how different it is to run in spikes and not regular running shoes, how strange to think that at one time I was covering seven meters in a second and maybe, just maybe, I could do that again.
I miss track so much.