AMERICAN DREAM
1. oh baby
The American Dream materializes in a Midwestern field. It’s October 20th, 2018 and there are 235 runners descending on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They are setting up their tents in the shadow of the Arboretum, struggling to keep them upright in the crosswinds. There is an elaborate tent with a matching flag. There is a tent picked up for free from a Facebook classified ad. There is one team with no tent at all. Their gear and backpacks are strewn among the roots of an old oak tree, seemingly abandoned. But thefts among distance runners are rare and inconceivable at the particular moment as the NIRCA Great Plains Regional Award Ceremony begins near another tent some distance away.
The American Dream is a myth, a legitimate sociopolitical goal, a buzzword, a fantastic reality, a bitter pill to swallow, and many other things I cannot hope to explain or fathom. But to me, there is nothing more emblematic of the American spirit than an amateur college club running organization operating outside the NCAA backed by the funding of free individuals who solely wish to run and prolong the glory days of cross-country and athletic achievement a little bit longer. That is freedom, I suppose. That’s my freedom. It’s not my grandparents’ American Dream, nor is it yours, nor will it be mine in 10 years, but today, in the arboretum, it is all I have. I’m not sure what to do with it or what price I’m paying for it, but in those hours, the United States of America has granted me this completely bonkers club running federation and an insanely dedicated running club to help me along the way.
My American Dream loops around the Arboretum. It trudges up the one hill in the center of the course. It laces up spikes and waits for the NIRCA official to shout “GO!” because there is no budget for a starting gun. It huddles together and gives a brief pep talk. My American Dream is a cross-country race.
2. other voices
It’s 5 AM and the Northwestern Track Club is outside the Foster-Walker Complex. The club president waits expectantly, hoping two months of planning bears fruit. At this point, she is hoping for a bag of fresh honey crisp apples, but she will settle for purchasing some from Trader Joe’s. It has been a long day already, filled with restless sleep and 2 AM text messages. Her teammates are groggy and in desperate need of transportation. They drive their unassuming minivans into the maw of the Midwest. The drive to Urbana-Champaign is long but not filled with terrors. Instead, the two-and-a-half hour drive features nondescript suburbs, desolate farmland and windswept pockets of trees. In the grim light of dawn, wind turbines, planes and cell phone towers flash intermittently in the distance, also unassuming, but not moving.
Everything in the Midwest claims to be unassuming, if we’re being honest. Whether those things succeed is a constant matter of debate. The Northwestern Track Club, in that honorable tradition, fashions itself as the most unassuming sports club in Evanston. The Club’s marketing material features the slogan “WE DO OUR BEST” with the Club’s Earl of Transport resignedly leaping over a pit of water. Attendance is optional, workouts are optional, and competition is optional. But, in keeping with the Midwestern spirit, passion is not optional. Thus, the team is on the road with plenty of time to set up their tents before the men’s race. Meanwhile, Loyola Chicago’s Club Team will arrive too late to even make the start.
3. i used to
Almost everyone running at the NIRCA Great Plains Regional “used to” run somewhere else. One glaring exception is John D., who is riding in the van and headed for his reckoning with 8000 meters despite declaring he felt “like buttcheeks” the night before. John D. has never run for a cross-country team of any kind before last week’s Sauk Valley Skyhawk Invitational. He started with quite a performance, assisting the NUTC men’s team to a dominant team victory at the meet. But that race only had 35 runners and lacked the palpable buzz of a cross-country meet, which almost everyone else is used to. Most of the people here are unreformed high school XC grinders, not the limitlessly talented folks who run at Division I schools. They are typically your Nos. 4-7 on the squad or great runners from small schools. They are great teammates, filled with verve and a constant desire to get better. Many of the runners at the Regional still sport the free Nike Cross Regionals hats that signify participation…plus more. But John D. has none of that context, and for that I admire him, because getting into this business as an early-20s grad student is rare and a little baffling. He runs the race in extreme pain, but lives to tell the tale.
On the other end of the spectrum, Hannah is running in yet another cross-country race. As she wins the women’s race by 37 seconds, it’s clear to the spectators and the other runners that she’s very, very familiar with running very quickly. Hannah, an ex-Division I runner, has been doing this indefinitely. She’s very good, but she’s so good that the University of Illinois women’s team, still smarting over their stunning loss to Northwestern in last year’s Great Plains Regional, has decided to let her win the race. Due to the stupidity of cross-country scoring, which does not weight someone finishing first (I’m not going to explain, but the U of I women’s team strategy is obvious) or beating the field by a huge margin, the Illinois team clearly intends to run well but mostly leave Hannah to her own devices up front out of fear of burning themselves out early. But that’s lame, so we’ll leave this section with Hannah completely destroying the field.
Robby has been running properly for two weeks. Thankfully, he used to run with considerable natural talent, which means he ends up as NUTC’s No. 5 runner with a PR of 29:28. I will note that this a full 1:21 faster than he ran last year. I will put this dramatic improvement down to Iowa being a terrible state. Robby finishes five seconds behind Patrick, who used to play soccer in the fall. What a terrible idea. It’s almost as bad of an idea as being a Tottenham fan, to which Patrick will probably say “you can suck on this PR, you tosser.” He’s not British, I just assume all American Tottenham fans annoyingly use British slang for no reason. But he raced really well and we’re glad to have him.
4. change yr mind
David runs the fastest time of any male NUTC runner. Clad in checkered shorts, he spends most of his first NIRCA Regional encircled by Illinois runners and battling fatigue but still manages a top-15 finish. He’s one of the better NUTC runners of the last four years. Even though this is his third race of the season, this is David’s first-ever NIRCA scrap. Despite, you know, being good at cross-country, his appearance is a product of two years of selling David on this American Dream, club cross-country. Clearly, he’s taken to it like someone who has been separated from his or her favorite blanket or stuffed animal and suddenly spends a month at home and it’s still just as reassuring as remembered. NUTC is glad to have him.
This is also Abby’s first-ever NIRCA race. She didn’t ever want to race again after four exhausting years of D3 competition. She raced a wide variety of events (two marathons, a number of 5Ks) , but always skirted the club’s races out of some nascent hesitancy. It’s understandable. For the grad students who always trickle into these mostly undergraduate NIRCA affairs, going back to racing feels like a chore. Racing is hard. It taxes your body and screws with your mind. There’s something soothing about running marathons or half marathons. The urgency of a 6K or an 8K or the pressure to pass people and duel for places is usually exhausting. And yet, in her return, she slots herself in as NUTC’s fourth runner on the day and makes the top 30 overall. Nice.
5. how do you sleep?
Unless you are like me, in which case you cannot get enough of racing and have a fundamental problem with seeking opportunities to compete. It’s not exactly healthy. I don’t even particularly like racing at this point, I just can’t help myself. In high school, I missed one cross-country race over four years. I haven’t missed any club races. I’ve raced when I should not have raced, raced over completing homework, raced over sleeping. I’ve raced in eight different states. I went to Iceland to solely to race a marathon. I am going to keep spending money on random local 5Ks until I die.
Also, to everyone who signed up and dropped out due to non-injury or crew team issues…how’d you sleep? Emma should probably find a way to sleep more. Despite this, she places 10th and picks up a sweet NIRCA medal for the first time. Emma, noted horse girl, demands to see the horses in the fields near the arboretum. Running a great cross-country race and hanging out with horses afterward is her American Dream. I mean, that’s all there is to say, right?
6. tonite
Adam spends the night worrying about coordinating vehicles. He is the “Earl of Transport” and he lords over his domain with constant mindfulness of Joyce Oakes, the club sports van coordinator. Thankfully, before the sun has risen, Alex M. has decided to find his own transportation and enough people didn’t show up so that Adam could cram 20 people into three vans and leave it at that. He would doubtlessly rather take on all 148 other runners in the race in an 800, but he manages a 44th-placed finish anyway. Alex M. uses home-court advantage to run a solid 32:26.
In a span of 17 seconds at the finish line, Jason, Nathan and Andrew rumble through the chute. These guys are [let’s get this] bread and butter NIRCA guys. In my ludicrous fantasy of NIRCA as American ideal, their races are the epitome of the American individual as given to us by history and popular culture. They ran great. I’m glad Jason and Andrew finally got to a race and Nathan made back-to-back NIRCA Regionals.
7. call the police
Cameron and Mike are good examples of pacing. Cameron, according to his watch, decided to run his first mile in a 5:20, which is a full 40 seconds faster than the pace he completed the race at. Mike did not do this, and he strolled to a very good 30:01 and nipped Cameron at the line by a second. It’s funny because Cameron is now in his second season with NUTC and the President of the Cycling Club, so you’d figure he’d know a lot about pacing, but no, not in the slightest. Be like Mike. NUTC Coach John L. has been battling illness all quarter, but he gave it a go anyway and still finished in the top 100. Be like John too.
Tucker has been battling a severely strained butt muscle for the last two weeks. He came to the meet anyway and warmed up but couldn't do the race. He took some great photos. Tucker's version of the American Dream is probably far more rooted in actual problems and realities in the lives of daily Americans. It also definitely centers around the Pacific Northwest. And yet, he can't seem to stop traveling around this flatland with a bunch of bozos, so clearly cross-country is more important than all of that.
8. american dream
The only thing drier than Maura’s sense of humor is distance runners before races. I’m not sure what her ideal of the American Dream is, but she’d probably bluntly but politely make fun of me for trying to foist this ridiculous framing narrative. She ran great, finishing 61st with a 29:27. She’d then probably get her good friend Meredith to completely rewrite this article from a more rational perspective, replete with the standard number of real quotes and real journalistic objectivity, while also including charming pop culture references to musicals that PEOPLE WILL ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND. Incidentally, Meredith also ran really well, finishing 49th with a 27:44. Both vow to run faster at Nats.
Renzo would much rather prefer the American Dream to be simulated in Cities Skylines.
9. emotional haircut
Izzeh and Megan do not like the hill in the center of the Illinois course. Having run more Illinois courses than they can count, a large manmade hill is not exactly their cup of tea. But Izzeh, despite a mild illness and general stress from being a Northwestern student, doesn’t give up. She doesn’t give up on dictating the club’s GroupMe with pointed remarks and carefully curated Twitter jokes. She doesn’t give up on Halloween socks. She doesn’t give up on this race, and she secures the women’s team a third-place finish and a trophy.
Megan's final time up the incline is yet another sworn duty that she will perform to her utmost ability.
10a. SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF CLUB PRESIDENT MEGAN
i) Megan, going back to the registrar for a second time to pick up one signature that she won’t even need. NIRCA has increasingly decided to ruin the fun and requires copious amounts of paperwork and eligibility forms. Megan has to deal with all of that.
ii) Megan, sitting in Norris, waiting eagerly for people to come to sign the signatures form mentioned in subsection i. She’s staring at the window, she knows they will come, even if they don’t come and she needs to…find a way…to sign off on the eligibility form anyway.
iii) Megan, rewording her request for certified drivers. And again. And again, ceaselessly, into the past. Eleven times.
iv) Megan, cognizant that her term is ending soon, still waiting for innumerable responses from innumerable people in perpetuity in grace and good fortune
v) Megan, checking the meet start time for the twentieth time, desperate to make up for the Sauk time incident, sleeping fitfully, thinking fitfully
vi) Megan, now fit for any presidency
vi) Megan, running as fast as she can on the final loop of the course, trying to make up spots
v) Megan, asleep in the van on the way back from Urbana-Champaign.
10. black screen
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real.”
Section titles are taken from the album American Dream by LCD Soundsystem. Feel free to listen to the songs while reading the specific passages. I didn't put this note at the beginning because that would be too pretentious, even for me, if that's even possible.
