Hello friends!
This week is the Track & Field World Championships, which is basically the Olympics but only for track & field. (According to Wikipedia, it was started in response to the Olympic Committee dropping the men’s 50km walk from the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Rude!) The Summer Olympics is one of my favorite things in the whole world, and, as you know, I love running, so you can imagine how much joy streaming this on Peacock is bringing me right now.
Watching these sort of spectacles brings a recurring question to my mind: what if I had taken running more seriously when it all began, in high school? I ran cross-country through senior year but skipped practice as much as I could because I hated it, mostly because of the coaches. One was a racist who used to ask me what Ahmadinejad thought of current events (YIKES!); the other one only liked girls who were fast, and I was only so-so. There was a volunteer third coach who was nice to me, but our relationship strained after she told me I had red Gatorade on my face. (It was not red Gatorade—it was a burnt layer of skin caused by over-applying Sally Hansen upper lip hair removal cream the night before.) Teens and hair removal, amirite?
In the end, my life would’ve ended up the same, but maybe I’d have a 2:45 marathon to my name. I’d still be a middle-management employee at a media company and (musically) tone deaf.
Anyway, back to the World Champs. It’s feel good TV, you guys. I teared up when the three American women finished top 10 in the marathon, and again when Kenyan Faith Kipyegon, who does calisthenics with Eliud Kipchoge, won the 1500m. Even Nathan got invested in the final lap of the women’s 10k when Letesenbet Gidey, a 24-year-old Ethiopian, fricken’ kicked it to the finish and won her first medal. You can watch the rest of the events on NBC and its spin-offs all week long (sched is here.)
I know the majority of my readers aren’t here for the track stats so I’ll stop there. Have you been running lately? I’ve been running more than usual because I’ve been a bit Jekyll-and-Hyde, and the running kind of keeps Hyde at bay (#SaveNathan). Let me know in the comments. Keep the endorphins up!