MEMORY #1
Today was a great day outside, and so the littlest one and I went to the park. We played on a wooden playground set a few feet from a hill at the park.
This hill, when I ran for the cross country team, signified the terrible end to the race, when we had to run up the hill, then down it into "the chute". This chute was the mandatory cool-down area at the end of the race, roped off with flags and well-intended people.
We wandered past a party with hot dogs on the BBQ, volleyball games in session in soft suburban grass, and into a softball tournament. I used to play here myself, back in my youth. I saw a catcher wearing a gadget called a "knee saver", which were pads to rest on attached to her back calf muscles. If I had used something like that, I might have kept playing, because my knees were the reason I quit. I was the only catcher on a team for an entire season and my knees protested every time I thought of softball after that.
I also had to quit cross country because of my knees. I was one of two girls who signed up for cross country when they started it at my junior high. There were three, originally, but one dropped out. In the one mile and two mile races on the track tea, and during cross country season, it was always just I and Sunny Mitchell.
Now, I drop that name around here, and people who know us laugh, especially on the cross country team in high school, for sure. Sunny was a superstar. I was only slightly better than average. I could come in front of the middle of the pack on the junior varsity team, and Sunny was in the top five cross country runners in the state. Our varsity team in high school won everything, and five of the top ten runners in the state were on our team. Everyone knew Sunny as a runner, and me as an "also-ran", which was fine with me. She was darn good at it, and there was always this fear driving me when I ran against her in junior high track - "Don't get lapped by Sunny." She was always on my heels coming back around the track.
But I loved running. My dad was a marathoner and my "trainer". He would ride his bike alongside me, or run with me, and think of speed drills. Mostly, he talked about my brother, though. I mainly listened.
We would sometimes run from our house to this park, when the road was just being built through, when I was in junior high, a distance of probably 1.5 miles. We would race the cross country course, two miles, then jog home. I remember the way he looked at me one day when a horse in a neighboring field whinnied, and I whinnied right back.
I was kind of horse crazy growing up, but it stood me in good stead during my running years. I would imagine I was a pony express horse, or a trotter, or a racehorse. Lately I feel like a draft horse trying to get back in shape to pull the wagon. My imagination could keep me running for hours, but at one point my knees started giving out. There is an odd reoccuring pain under my left kneecap that has kept me from pushing it too hard over the years since.
These are the things I think about when I go to Cypresswood Park, memories that make my knees ache.