Caligari, Blocks, Illinois Club Relays
Distance runners are all expressionists. Running several thousand meters obliviates the minimalist angels of our nature. In “ball games,” an athlete can retain a minimalist style, a level of grace, and compact motion that betrays nothing yet achieves everything. Think of Andrea Pirlo, Steph Curry, or Roger Federer, athletes that can achieve through simplicity, athletes that can gain the whole world without betraying an inch of their soul. The distance runner can never have that. You see it in the photos. The vast majority of distance runners wear some constricting mask of agony during the course of competition.
And that’s just the meets; you don’t see the workouts, the long runs, the endless miles of inelegance and raw expression that typify the life of a distance of runner. Even those who seem peaceful while running--think Mo Farah or Almaz Ayana--are still exhausted and emotionally charged at the end. Who finishes a 5K, nonchalantly wipes his or her brow, and then calmly waves to the crowd? No one does that. It’s impossible. Swimmers don’t do it either. Did you watch cross-country skiing at the Olympics? No casual gestures there. These sports of expression simply take too much out of the human body to allow for minimalism. If you are a minimalist distance runner or biathlete, you aren’t trying hard enough. Last year, I wrote that Illinois Club Relays were the most emphatic expression of a desire to remain in shape and competitive that existed in club running. But the sport of distance running goes beyond that. Club Relays is really just a microcosm for the larger endeavor.
This brings me to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a German silent film released in 1920 that you have probably never seen unless you are a film major. I’ve only seen it because I was assigned to see it in college as part of English 214: Introduction to Film and its Literatures by Professor Nick Davis. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the pinnacle of German Expressionist filmmaking, a famous style that rose to fame during the 1920s. It’s the first real arthouse horror movie, the first psychological thriller, and a monumental description of mental illness in society. It’s good. This is not a hot take. Saying The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is good to film buffs is like saying I think Hamlet is a pretty solid play to an English major.
The plot of the film is very complicated, featuring a flashback, a murder mystery, some horror elements, and an insane asylum. German Expressionist film, like distance running, is so “extra” that it eventually becomes a parody of itself (see the entire modern horror movie scene or the career of Alberto Salazar). Every 3K, 5K or 8K I’ve ever run feels like a silent German Expressionist nightmare. I always seem to be wandering around some parts of Iowa that I’ve never seen before, or seeing the same dizzying surroundings as I turn left again and again. And then it ends, just like a silent film. And as Cesare sneaks through a confused mess of darkness and light in my memory…suddenly it’s heat No. 9 of the 60-meter dash at the Illinois Club Relays. I have never written about sprinting for a very simple reason; I am not a sprinter. The shortest distance I have run in a competition is 400 meters, where my PR is listed at a delightfully slow 61 seconds. I managed to break 57 seconds in a few relays. That was it. I am running the 60 because I have never done it before and this is the only meet where I won’t be embarrassed by moonlighting as a sprinter.
As I approach the line, I realize there are a bevy of behavioral scripts that sprinters act out every day. I know none of them. I am vaguely aware that I am supposed to crouch down at the starting line and wait for the gun. In the paddock, the sprinters are either deeply focused or jovial and relaxed. There is no middle ground of feigned indifference that distance runners wield as a barrier against their opponents when they toe the line. There is a genuine feeling of gentlemanly conduct. I don’t talk to anyone, but I surely could have without any trouble. No one seems to realize that I am an imposter. Of course, this fantasy lasts until my heat is called up. At this point, I figured people had either seen my seed time (a fairly ridiculous 9.2 seconds) or my lack of Spandex (I was wearing my regular, super-short, purple running shorts and my singlet) and understood that I was some sort of hack.
The official, a kind, older man who looks like he has been at lllinois track meets since before Vietnam, calls up the next heat and checks my number. He sees my drab appearance and facial expression of total panic and chuckles to himself. What’s really happened is that my teammates have sold me out as a total fraud. The entire team is crowded next to the start line, and they have apparently been speculating on what’s going to happen in my sprinting debut. They have somehow communicated these fears to the official, who laughs as it’s clear that I don’t even understand the basic pre-race routines. I have no idea how to set blocks. In fear of screwing something up completely, I simply move them far enough back so that I can only place my hind leg on the orange plastic. The other foot is just on the ground, leaving me in a ridiculous stance that serves no real purpose. Also, apparently, when you get to the line, you aren’t supposed to be ready immediately. In any distance longer than 800 meters, there is scarcely any time wasted between arriving at the line and the horrific reality of the gunshot. I get to the line and immediately crouch down, ready to sprint. No one else is doing this. As the instructions are being read out, I stay in ready position until I realize that the entire heat is standing up and waiting for me to get with the program.
Okay. Okay. I stand up briefly and the starter says “runners on your mark.”In distance running, there are only two start commands. I’ve forgotten that before I ever started distance running, the classic start command includes three sentences (on your mark, get set, go). I know this, I really do, but in the pressure of the moment I forget the sprinting commands are different. It seems interminably long before he says “get set.” In my peripheral vision, I notice that the other six men in my heat have assumed the position on their blocks. I realize, far too late, that if I had set the blocks up properly I would have a rather large advantage when I start. Before I finish the thought, the gun has gone off.
I didn’t finish last! I was actually second in the heat with an 8.33, which was surprising to everyone. On replay, it looks like my start was the most effective of anyone in the heat, but as my foot speed decreased I had gotten reeled in. Oh well. It was a success. I didn’t even feel tired.
Sprinting is the artistic and emotional riposte to distance running. Runners are Expressionists with a capital “E.” Sprinters are minimalists. They do not collapse to the ground in pain after the 60m. The emotions they feel are intense, but brief. Many of them simply continue on through the line, as if the work they’ve done isn’t truly satisfying. But that’s it. The race was over. For someone who specializes in distances over 3,000 meters, an 8-second dash to the finish feels like I've swindled someone. But it’s not a swindle. If anything, the 60-meter dash is more serious than any specific point of a mile run. It’s just a different form of art and a different form of meter, something that I cannot appreciate without undergoing the proper training and upbringing.
Later, I run a leg of the 4x200 meters in 28 seconds. I am dying, my legs are cramping, and I can barely move after the race ends. My brief career as a sprinter probably ended right there. The Northwestern Track Club attends the Illinois Club Relays from start to finish. Our 4x400 team is entered in the final heat of the final event. We spend nine hours in the University of Illinois Armory Track, a duration that is fairly standard for a winter track meet. My record, set in the Armory Track Center in Manhattan, is a stellar 14 hours from start to finish at either the Hispanic Games or the New Balance games. The meet wasn’t event over when I left that particular installment. The meet goes well for us. Our 4x800 team runs a 8:43, which is good enough for 12th in the meet. Considering our XC teams regularly finish near the bottom third of the table, I am pleased. Three of our 3K runners run season bests (Cameron, John G., and myself) and Grace ran a solid 6:19 mile in the debut of her transition from sprinting to distance.
The Second Earl of Transport's final mile happened. He also ran a not terrible 200, which just proves that moonlighting as a sprinter is the move for all distance runners. Wish we could've had more of the women's team there competing, but alas. The 4x200 and the 4x400 weren’t quite as good, but it was a good day all around. Given that I will likely be on JR during my final winter quarter, this is the final winter track meet I will be running for the foreseeable future. During the halcyon days of my senior year in high school, I made a precursor to this blog that updated on how miserable I was during winter track. There’s something about running indoors that removes my ability to breathe and replaces it with the desire to write my experiences down. As much as I truly despise running indoors, I have spent slightly more time competing in indoor tracks and going to winter practices than running and training for cross-country in the fall, which is astonishing to me. All my memories are from cross, but all my time is spent in dusty buildings with no oxygen. I feel absolutely no nostalgia for winter track.
I have always treated it as the ugly sibling of the three seasons. Running indoors is just physically more painful than running indoors. I will go to my grave believing the body is not built to run indoors. In the first four years, I had the luck of running on a banked track, but the flat 200-meter tracks of the Midwest are pure hell on the legs and the mind. I didn’t even want to run indoor this season, and yet somehow I raced more than anyone on the team. I think the misery does bring out productive stretches of writing for me.
In the end of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the viewer realizes Francis has been in an insane asylum the whole time. The entire horrific story is a figment of this imagination. Perhaps, all along, indoor track has been the main event the whole time, and all my dreams of running outdoors are merely mythic distractions from the grind.
