A REAL SPORT

As it turned out, football was to be my path to distance running after all. The next time I tried to do it came after a fractured wrist in my first intra-squad scrimmage at Randolph-Macon College. Let it be known that it's never a good idea to try to stiffarm a guy nicknamed Brickhead. 

With a cast on my right arm, I needed something else to do during contact drills in practice that August. The first few milers along the railroad tracks still left me with a lot of down time just watching the team go through the week's plays. So the next time out I turned off the tracks through Dogtown and headed west out James Avenue into the Virginia countryside. 



Sprinting away from a big-bellied beagle bitch who gave chase from a rundown white frame house at the edge of town, I broke into the late afternoon sunshine under a big blue sky. Soon I found myself bobbing alongside cornfields and up-and-down the rolling hills of the Blue Ridge piedmont. A sweet breeze hinting of the coming Fall cooled my forehead and dried my drenched white practice jersey along with the week's worries: Exams in my death-defyingly boring Economics major; Learning new plays as a freshman tailback behind two amazing African-American upperclass runners; The contradiction of being drawn to friends and parties in a southern fraternity with Confederate sentiments; And, most importantly for my life to come, the gasping breaths that had put a stop to previous runs. I was cruising along acutely aware of only the world around me until a trio of crows swooped past, turning me back toward town. 

Before I knew it, I was back across the tracks and jogging into practice to the sidelong glares of my wrung-out teammates, rejoining them just in time for the last water break before wind sprints. Little did they or I know that I had just found my path to enduring the hard road ahead.