He was my coach. For a short time, the second semester of my
freshman year at Marist, the young man – who throughout our entire adult lives
I would refer to as “Young James” (which
now is quite ironic) – coached our small, ragtag group of men’s distance
runners during the winter and spring of 1983. He wasn’t much older than us,
still in his prime as a runner, with a great running resume to his credit. He
only stayed for those few months before moving on, but in that short time
together, we formed a lot of great memories – some of which cannot be repeated
here. Jimmy taught us a lot about running. He was the first person to instill
in us the very basic concept that to be great at this sport – or, at the very
least, as good as you could be – you had to train twice a day. That’s still a
concept that some young runners don’t quite grasp, but it surely is elemental
to success at the collegiate level (or any level, really). Like anyone who’s
ever coached here, he struggled with finding ways to train distance runners in
the mid-Hudson Valley winter. I remember one time, he had us run over to the
Vassar College golf course, which was covered with about two feet of snow, and
we did high knee drills and running for several miles, and then we ran back. Hey,
you got to get creative sometimes.
Young James turned 60 on Wednesday. How can this be? Oh. It’s
pretty simple. The calendar doesn’t lie. Jimmy’s 60. The week prior, a close
mutual friend mentioned that there would be a small celebration for Jimmy’s
birthday on Wednesday night. My immediate reaction was, “Um, uh, geez,
Wednesday night, in Fishkill, so much going on, not sure I can make it …” Then
I thought to myself, “come on, man, it’s Jimmy! You rarely see him. Figure it
out!” I checked with Heidi. There’s always stuff going on. This kid’s gotta go
there, drop offs, pick ups, meetings, recruiting calls, etc. It’s so easy to
make an excuse why you can’t do something; but sometimes, you gotta make the
effort to get there – 60’s a big one. Heidi’s great to me in so many ways, but
especially in helping me overcome inertia to get out and do stuff like this. My
default state is to put on my pajama pants, sit at my laptop and do work until
I fall asleep.
The conversation around the restaurant table focused on old
times and great memories, but also on the current state of our lives. In a
funny, meandering way, our lives have intersected again. Jimmy’s Godson is now
a freshman on our team – he’s “Uncle Jimmy” to our young runner. It is our
sincere hope that more than 30 years later, Young James will once again be at
Marist track meets on a regular basis. We talked about old training runs and
races. Jimmy returned to the area after a few years, and we ran hundreds of
miles together. The talk turned also turned to our current ailments. All of us
have had surgeries in the recent past – plates and screws inserted, soft tissue
injuries sewed up. Smart phone pictures were not of family members but rather
of ER visits and surgical X-rays. We all compared styles of our reading
glasses. Oh yeah. We all have reading glasses. I guess this is what you do at
60th birthday parties.
There was a lot of nostalgia, but interestingly no regrets.
A lot of guys in our era, during our younger days, we trained long and hard – week
after week, month after month, year after year. Some have scars to prove it,
all have creaky joints that remind us each and every morning of what we did to
ourselves back when we were young. But one guy in the group, the one with the
most scars, said it best. He doesn’t regret a second of it all. It was all
good, even when it wasn’t all good. We’re all still moving in some fashion –
running, jogging, walking, swimming, cycling. Our competitive racing days are in the past, but we have the shared memories and most importantly the
shared friendships that have gotten us to this 60th birthday
celebration. Endurance comes in all forms. When it was time to leave, I hugged
Young James (not so young anymore), told him I loved him and hoped that he
would come to our meets in the coming months and years. No matter what, it’s
good to celebrate a lifetime of memories, enduring friendships, while we’re still young enough to
smile and laugh about them – hopefully that will be the case for many years to
come.
