Wearing Your Heart on Your Shirt,
by Parker Morse
At the end of 2003, I paid a visit to Londonderry, New Hampshire for the
fifth annual Millennium Mile. The screaming, downhill road mile put on by
elite athletes John Mortimer and Matt and Andy Downin has become a bit of a
tradition for me, even if all I do is watch 500 people put up
triple-asterisk PRs.
This year, as I watched the field (including Matt Downin in a Frosty the
Snowman outfit) streaming down Mammoth Road, I noticed five or ten runners
plastered with stickers. As they got closer, I could read the name of a
candidate for president on the stickers, and by the looks of the spectator
with the Arkansas Razorback jacket and the big sign, there was definitely an
organized effort there.
At first, I considered this mildly eccentric; this was, after all, New
Hampshire, where bird-dogging is a quadrennial hobby and presidential
candidates set records for making physical contact with an inordinately
large percentage of the state population. For a few seconds I wondered if
there might even be a candidate in the race, but apparently that's too
optimistic for this election.
After I left the race, I realized that what really struck me as odd was that
people had chosen that campaign as something to bring with them to a race.
Maybe I'm admitting some sort of obsession, but there's a lot of
subconscious? baggage in my race uniform. I don't think I'm the only one. We
wear, or see others wear, team uniforms (high school, college, club) to
indicate our shared effort in a race. For some years I was fortunate to have
racing singlets from my employer, indicating both the runners I trained with
and the website where I spent my workday energy.
A few years ago, the coach at my alma mater replaced the cross-country
uniforms, and offered the old ones to the alumni; I know I'm not the only
runner in New England proudly racing in one. When I ran Boston, I didn't
even like changing my uniform to put my name on it. (I put it on the back,
so when I crashed and burned every runner who passed me knew my name. Bright
idea.)
Now, I'm the last one to tell anybody what to wear in a race. I hear some
people even get paid to wear certain uniforms. But for the rest of us,
what's on our racing shirt means something to us. Like the stickers in our
car windows, it's something that we choose to display.
It might even be something we run for, something bigger than ourselves that
we choose to be a part of. Think of the thousands of Team in Training
marathoners who wear that purple shirt--the only team uniform they've ever
had--like Crusader's armor. Think of the high school rookie, lost in an
over-sized uniform, taking her place in a line of athletes that stretches
for years before her and, barring budget cuts, will continue for years after
she graduates. We run races which span centuries in the uniforms of clubs
which are sometimes older than the races. Even the campaign-sign-bearing
spectator wore a jacket associating him with a collegiate running tradition
as old as he was.
In that context, a campaign for a politician's four-year term seems as
temporary as a thirty-second television spot. I'm glad to see voters being
enthusiastic about an election, but what will those runners be wearing at
next year's race?
Parker Morse bought black shorts specifically to go with his Amherst College
singlet. His Millennium Mile time, in 2001, was fourteen seconds faster than
his track PR.
