ATHLETE

ATHLETE was scrawled across the neon pink fabric in a bold, beautiful blue.

My mom and I had picked the t-shirt out together last week, but today was the first day it would be put into use. It was unlike any other t-shirt I had previously owned. It still felt a little foreign on my skin, even though I’d tried it on upwards of five times in preparation for this day. The fabric was not the cheap polyester or heavy cotton that I was familiar with, but instead it was made with enhanced water-wicking microfiber technology.

Or so the tag read. I didn’t know exactly what that meant or how it actually worked. All I knew was how it made me feel: confident. The t-shirt, paired perfectly with black and pink shorts of similar material and bearing the one of the most recognizable logos in the world of athleisure, had been ridiculously overpriced. Such an occasion as this, however, merited a bit of shameless splurging.

It was the first day of track practice. But more importantly, it was the day I would begin to prove myself. I had been waiting for this opportunity for what felt like forever, ever since I’d sat in the coarse upholstered chair of my pediatrician’s office and watched him sign the physical form. With a few short haphazard hand motions, he had stamped the seal to officially separate me, the ATHLETE, from the general populous.

As of today, I was treading out into uncharted waters, or more accurately, striding across unexplored lands. I was moving up into the major leagues, the primetime broadcast, the bona fide Real Deal™: high school sports. The varsity track team was territory only one other girl in my eighth grade class was familiar with. That girl was Celine, my very best friend, and now, my teammate. She had already made the transition to ATHLETE a year before, when she began competing in cross country races and subsequently put everyone else to shame when we ran the mile in gym class.

Of course, ran is a rather loose interpretation. I hardly called my 14 minute split a jog or even a trot, let alone a run. Which was fine with me at the time, because I had never even wanted to have any sort of association with running. Even in my early elementary school soccer ventures I had insisted on playing goalie, my underlying motive being less running. It wasn’t for me, that is, until suddenly it seemed like it was for everyone else.

A few of my aunts, uncles, and cousins had recently taken up the sport in an effort to get in shape. At every family gathering, there was talk of miles and 5k’s and--worst of all--marathons. Conversations with Celine often ended up spiraling into descriptions of last weekend’s race or her upcoming interval workout. Though the mere idea of all these things made me shudder, I was even more repulsed by the fact that they could all do something I could not.

I was ready to distinguish myself from the joggers and trotters of the world and establish my place in a whole new tier of runners and ATHLETES. I tightened my ponytail in the mirror and bent down to lace my shoes. They weren’t technically running shoes. They were actually intended for basketball, but that seemed sporty enough to me. Plus, the little pink accents on them almost perfectly matched my outfit. I shed my sweatpants and stuffed them in my bag before turning to Celine. “I’m ready,” I declared.

“Aren’t you gonna be cold?” she asked, tugging at the sleeves of her hoodie so that they covered her bare hands. “It’s like forty degrees!”

“I’ll warm up when we start running,” I said with a shrug. I was mortified by the thought of high schoolers on the team seeing my dingy sweats or grade school hoodie. If I wanted to be on their team, I had to look the part too. What good was a water-wicking microfiber name-brand t-shirt if no one could see it?

“Suit yourself.” Celine led the way out of the locker room and toward the edge of the track, where the rest of the team had gathered. Everyone was broken up into little animated clumps, stretching and doing plyometrics before the official start of practice. Just a glance was enough to identify the wiry distance runners, long-legged hurdlers, and bulky throwers. That glance was also enough for me to know I had made a big mistake.

I felt goosebumps creeping up my limbs, unrelated to the biting wind that swirled around the plain of the track. Before I could change my trajectory and hurry back to the locker room, I heard a booming yell of “TWO LAPS,” to signal the start of the warm up.

Although I was wearing my brand new shirt, I felt more naked than ever. I may as well have been, because I looked like a flamingo gone astray in my garish, glaring pink. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I shuffled up to the line amidst the throng of neutrals: a subdued rainbow of gray, black, and white. Once I saw the rest of the team up close, I noticed that no one else seemed to be sporting any water-wicking microfiber attire either. I was an impermeable pink pimple in a cloud of comfortable cotton and sensible sweatshirts.

There was barely time to dwell on the disaster unfolding before we took off running. For the more seasoned ATHLETES this warm up surely fell into the jog or trot category. They called it conversation pace. For me, however, it was an arduous, unrelenting run. Asphyxiation pace. Just 800 meters later I was gasping and gripping my side as I joined the stretching circle. I took my place next to Celine, who was already breathing evenly again. “I like your outfit, by the way,” she remarked.

Mortified, I slowly folded my arms across my chest to cover up the text. Even if I could have steadied my breath enough to answer her, my throat felt too tight to speak. My eyes welled up from both the sting of the cold and my growing embarrassment. Did she not see the irony of the situation? It wasn’t just an outfit anymore; it was a costume.

“Are you okay?” Celine asked.

“Just cold.” I was too proud to admit I was self-conscious and too self-conscious to tell her the truth.

From across the circle I heard an unfamiliar voice call out the first stretch, “Down to the right!” The voice belonged to one of the high school girls. She was wearing big round glasses and had curly blonde hair that exploded from her ponytail into corkscrews in every direction.

After we had finished group stretches and the circle broke apart into small clumps, Celine quietly explained, “That’s Abby. She’s number one on the distance team, our relay anchor. She’s awesome. Pretty much everyone looks up to her.” I was instantly intimidated.

I looked across the lanes of the track to where Abby was conducting a routine of pre-run lunges, rocking back and forth at the peak of the stretch to get its full benefit. As I looked around, all the runners in the circle were similarly engrossed in their own cycles of drills. I did my best to mimic the others, extending my leg and flexing my foot, bending into the stretch until I could feel a satisfying tug at the top of my calves. They were already starting to feel sore just from the exertion of our warm-up.

“I heard we’re just running Church Street today. It’s only two miles,” Celine said, grabbing her foot and teetering on one leg for a moment to loosen up her quads. “Oh, and after practice don’t forget to pick up a singlet and pair of shorts for meets.”

She must have seen my panicked expression and noticed the way I blanched at the mention of just “two miles,” because she quickly added, “Don’t worry. Everyone always says the first three weeks are the hardest. If you can get through the first three weeks, you’ll be able to make it through the season.”

I gritted my teeth. Just three weeks. That was all that stood between me and my coveted ATHLETE status.

“ALRIGHT GUYS, CHURCH STREET!”

  ·  ·  ·    

“Just get through these first three weeks. It’s gonna be really hard at first, but it will get easier,” I said in between post-run core reps.

“But if this was just the first day, it’s only going to get harder from here!” She was a dark haired freshman with equally dark makeup, which was now quite smudged from equal parts sweat and rain. It was a misty afternoon for the first day of practice. I noticed that tears threatened to join the mixture. “Look at me, I’m a mess.”

I laughed. “Reagan, we’ve all been there. I always like to say if your mascara isn’t running, neither are you.”

“FLUTTER KICKS!”

“This is more than I signed up for,” she grumbled, begrudgingly resuming the exercise.

I slipped my hands under my butt for balance and raised my feet up to six-inches position. “It’s not easy.”

“Yeah, but you make it look easy. I’ll never be able to keep up you,” Reagan said, her breath shaking from the effort of the flutter kicks.

“Not at first,” I said with the slightest of shrugs. “But I’ve been doing this for almost five years now. My body’s gotten used to this kind of training.”

 “DOWN!”

Her feet and mine plunked to the ground in near unison, punctuated by mutual relieved sighs. She sat up and adjusted her ponytail. “But I just feel so far behind. it’s embarrassing.”

“Trust me,” I said, “I know the feeling. I felt exactly the same way on my first day. I wore this bright neon pink shirt that said ATHLETE, and I felt like the least athletic, most conspicuous person out there.”

“BICYCLES.”

Reagan locked her fingers behind her head, leaning back into position. “Well you sure look like an ATHLETE to me,” she grumbled.

“Probably not back then,” I said, my legs cycling steadily in front of me. “But who’s to say what an ATHLETE really looks like anyway?”

“I need a shirt that says HOT MESS,” Reagan sighed, pinwheeling her legs without much effort, as if she were just going through the motions.

“DOWN!”

    ·  ·  ·    

We all had rituals.

For Celine, it was lunges and leg swings, ten in each direction. She wore her signature lucky headband, now a faded pink from years of use for meets just like this. She liked to be slightly out of breath right before she started her events; she swore it made the transition into race pace easier. She would hop around and shake loose before the two command start, doing that same foot-to-foot shift kind of dance up until the starter yelled, “SET!” and she had to fall still for the gun.

For Reagan, it was arm circles, 25 forward and 25 backward. She’d thrust her arms out at me, and I’d shake them out, gently at first and then firmer, the way Abby had done for me at the start line of our 4x800m relay in years past. She would wiggle her limbs one by one and then all over again, a type of nervous, habitual hokey-pokey, both physical and mental. She would touch the line with her toe and then slowly measure out a couple of backward steps, which she’d quickly retrace when she heard the yell of “SET!”

For me, it was a little bit of everything. Some shaking, some swinging, some shifting. I always triple-checked my laces, tucking them under the tongue of my spikes so there was no risk of an untied shoe. I bent forward and placed my palms flat on the ground, knees straight, and felt the burn of the stretch in my hamstrings. Then I stood up and continued in the other direction, bending directly backward until my palms hit the ground again (my teammates found this absurd, but I swore it was the perfect way to finish up a series of stretches). While I toed the starting line, I went through a mental checklist of all the mantras I’d been told to tell myself throughout the years: When you’re on the line, you’re not sick anymore. You’re not injured anymore. You trust your training. You leave it all on the track.

“SET!”

It was the last race of my career, my senior year state meet. Although I was running this race as an individual, the entire team was giving me their energy. Stationed at various positions around the track, they were ready to scream my name and words of encouragement at every lap.

By now, I could distinguish each of them just from the sound of their voices. When we were in practice, I didn’t even need words. The sound of their footfalls alone was enough to tell me who had fallen in beside me. From a distance, I could tell them apart just from the manner of their gait.

Today every one of them was dressed in our matching uniforms, a bright red with a white logo, designed by Celine and brought into existence by the majority of our limited budget. Numbers were scribbled on hands in permanent marker, some a little smudged from wiping off sweat, with matching digits clinging to the singlets by safety pins. I looked down at my own number, pinned taut to my jersey. I was no exception.

I didn’t need to be dressed up like an ATHLETE. I was dressed like one of the team.

The gun fired with a “CRACK!”

And we were off.