Judson has already written about National Review’s participation in the ACLI Capital Challenge this morning (under the team name “Runners Athwart History”) and about my role in our effort (perhaps even a bit too flatteringly about the latter). But I would like to add a bit more by way of thanking my teammates.
I spent eight years of my life as a teammate on cross-country and track teams. That’s a considerable portion of this (relatively) young man’s life. It was a formative experience. Distance running is difficult to explain to those who do not do it. But those who share it as a pastime can form a powerful bond, especially if they’re on the same team. Writing in the cult-classic runner novel Once a Runner . . . , John L. Parker Jr. described this bond as “the easy fond intimacy that sports give to young men in groups and that they would consciously or subconsciously miss for the rest of their lives.” As, indeed, I do.
For the most part, though, I’ve stoically accepted that part of my life as now but a formative memory, never to be entirely replicated. And I have oddly eschewed most of the potential avenues for recreating the experience, preferring, for reasons both personal and practical, the loneliness of the long-distance runner.
But every once in a while, I am reminded, in the present, of why teammates are great. Their presence today began as a simple practicality: The Capital Challenge, which Judson aptly described as “a very self-aware gathering of media and government types” (including National Review contributor Mike Gallagher, who had a lot to live up to after last year’s performance), requires teams of five for entry. So if I wanted to experience this event, which sits uniquely at the intersection of two aspects of my life, I needed a team to do it.
My teammates — Madeleine Kearns, Isaac Schorr, Nick Tomaino, and Judson — had no reason to indulge my whims here. And I would have understood completely if they had not; it was a lot to ask of anyone. But they did it anyway, forcing themselves awake early this morning to embark on a little adventure in southeast D.C. We vied against other teams, not just for place and time supremacy, but also perhaps to earn a “best team name” award — or at least to avoid “worst.” We ended up with neither: “Right to a Speedy Mile,” the team of Randolph Moss, U.S. District Court judge for D.C., won the former, and Peace Corps team “We’re Baaack! No More Peace Corps-antine,” ‘won’ the latter. (Those curious can see all team-name honorees, and other award winners, here.)
We did, however, earn something more significant: a weird but ultimately enjoyable experience that brought us all closer, a memory we will now share. It serves, in my view, as a great reminder of how these things can have a great unifying power, a virtue in themselves that transcends their apparent, immediate aims. I have written about this before, responding to an argument, made after the horrible murder of jogger Ahmaud Arbery, that running was a racist activity for purportedly failing to transcend the prejudices of society:
Why might running’s popularity be growing? Aside from its sheer accessibility, it is also a powerful unifier. Anyone who has spent time on a cross-country or track team knows how quickly and deeply the miles run, the workouts done, and the races won (or lost) can bring together people of very different backgrounds. Anyone who has melted into a crowd of thousands united for the single purpose of completing the same race, often on behalf of a chosen charitable cause, knows how quickly the things that separate us can vanish. Anyone who has started a run with another person for the first time knows how this simple activity can turn a stranger into a friend. Heck, anyone who has gone for a simple jog down the street, seen another runner across the way, and exchanged a few words or an unspoken gesture knows how running can create a bond between the otherwise completely alien. It is an unsung force for communion, and community, in a country that desperately needs both.
Running is hardly alone in having this power, though it is the power of running in this regard with which I have the most experience. And I am grateful to have enjoyed it once again today, thanks to my teammates. So thanks, guys.
I hope you aren’t too sore.