Jogging track at Oxford

I was recently jokingly accused of affectation because I'm an unabashed East Coaster, complete with Sperry's and a string of pearls. (The irony is that I'm from Vermont, where people wear Teva sandals to one of the only nightclubs in town and shop at stores like this one.)

And then I wore my Oxford athletics sweatshirt:

"Oh, you took your pretension so far east you took it across the ocean?" ...(the teasing being slightly undermined by the sweatshirt draped over my friend's shoulders, sleeves tied)... "You ran track at Oxford?"

Not quite. Here's the backstory.

My relationship with track and field started when I was a seven-year-old running rec league at the same track I would later pound in high school. Unfortunately, I then forgot about track until a middle school friend told me I should join for fun.

So starting freshman year of high school, I spent my early spring afternoons at track preseason workouts. A few weeks of sore quads and hallway sprints later, after shoveling off most of the track and running on the slick snow in what I deemed a futile and dangerous attempt to melt it, we got outside. Dirt, gravel, red rubber, cold lungs, new leaves, cheap spikes, battered batons, bright locker rooms, even the scent of deodorant I used senior year — it all takes me back to those days. I was neither fast nor talented, but I loved the sport.

(My basketball career followed the same trajectory: rec league as a youngster, followed by a large gap and a high school career where I won spirit-of-the-sport-type awards but never really scored many points.)

But anyway, watching sports at Mason made me miss those casual high school years, so when I studied abroad and learned that all sports at Oxford are clubs, I eagerly looked into basketball (which, by definition, I should've been good at as an American) and athletics.

I did venture a bit beyond my two traditional sports: Most of these clubs have "taster sessions" to lure bright-eyed freshers into their sport, so my flatmate Claire and I went to a crew taster session just to say we'd rowed on the Thames (or the Isis) at Oxford. It went well until the final stretch, where I caught a crab, punching my oar into the novice in front of me. Claire, while not suffering any such embarrassments, decided her time would be better spent enjoying the other millions of things England has to offer. But I'm not quite as smart as she is. I went on to athletics.

The athletics taster session consists of jumping next to a measuring tape and sprinting back and forth in a tiny gym while the regulars applaud you and make you feel deceptively good about yourself. Real life starts one night later, with a workout of 4x200m, 4x200m, 8x150m and 8x150m. Total of about 1.75 miles, for those of you doing the math. Not too far. I showed up in my oversized neon t-shirt, quite pleased with my ensemble and still on a false high from the taster session. Pride goeth before a fall, folks.

Up to that point, my exercise consisted of a few two-miler jogs, with three solid years of post-high school lard layered on. You can imagine the outcome of that workout: my Spandex-clad backside chugging along on the darkening Iffley Road track, tracing Roger Bannister's four-minute-mile steps at a crawl. I later learned that my team included such notables as a Rhodes scholar who pole vaulted for Harvard. I was in way too deep.

But on the bright side, deep waters forced me to dig deep. I never really understood what that meant, until one solo workout in the dark when I realized that "digging deep" is code for "ignoring pain." Of course, the more I thought about it the more excited I got that I had finally figured it out, and that kept me going until I realized that my mental toughness lasts about fourteen seconds and it takes a lot longer than that to run 300 meters. But at least now I know.

And so I remain a proud Oxford University Athletics Club sweatshirt-wearer, even though my neighbors back home who went to Cambridge say that because I did not matriculate at Oxford I have not earned the right to shoe tabs (I'm still not sure what shoeing is, but tabs are Cambridge-ites and I shoed at least two of them at the Freshers Varsity meet). I will always think about digging deep in workouts, even if that just means timing my efforts so that I start working right when the Nike Training Club voice tells me to stay strong. And I will fondly, and with much humility, recall the time I spent jogging track at Oxford.