The 2019 NIRCA Nationals Recap
This is going to be completely incoherent. I’m now almost a full year removed from the “finest journalism school in the land”, and I reserve the right to turn this final blog post into whatever I see fit. Since my last post, there have been several successful blog posts on a blog called “Remember the Protocol”, a noble institution with no ties whatsoever to “Forget the Protocol”. They have done great work, but it’s time to bring it back home. If you are unfamiliar with these blog posts, I refer you to some fine examples of past work.
I believe the Northwestern Track Club (NUTC) can be used as a metaphor for anything. The overall story—a band of extremely busy people who use limited funding and resources to compete across the country—is instantly recognizable. I believe it can be used as a metaphor for the American Revolution, the women’s suffrage movement, Lenin’s Communist vanguard, and any number of examples from modernity. The idea of Track Club permeates all.
In fact, it could be reasonably argued that NUTC is now one of the key archetypes of human thought. According to some other guy named Jung, an archetype derives from basic themes of human life: birth, death, love, etc. These universal feelings and emotions lead to the creation of archetypal stories, like the flood narrative (apocalypse) or the trickster (Tom Hiddleston?). The example of NUTC is a newer archetype, one borne from the 243 years since the publication of The Wealth of Nations and the beginning of the American experiment. NUTC, by nature, is indicative of a natural reaction against the imperialist/capitalist apparatus of productivity culture. While I am not making some arbitrary moral judgment on these superstructures, I think that the general themes of NUTC—a need for exercise, a lack of proper funding, struggles to find time to practice in the midst of a deluge of work, complex cooperative organization in spite of itself, very long road trips—are universally relatable. The search for meaningful, active group leisure time in an age of burnout has become an archetypal tale, familiar to the masses in a calculated manner.
The original Jungian archetypes grew from the primordial ooze of human history. They are archetypes of the Neolithic Revolution (the move from hunter-gatherer to settled society), patriarchal, rigid, and familiar. These traditional stories were and still are familiar to us, but I believe the equally transformational Industrial Revolution must birth a new set of archetypes. The collective unconscious from BC 1019–AD 1019 cannot compare to the collective unconscious of 1919–2019. There is too much wealth. There are too many people. A new story must emerge: Track Club.
The concept of exercise in a subsistence-based lifestyle is limited. When one is working to survive, any hopes of additional physical responsibilities are quickly dashed. Those that were lucky enough to have surplus time and energy in the past had plenty of time for leisure and sport, but that has traditionally been concentrated in the hands of very few people. The idea of massive organizations devoted to recreation is no older than the 19th century, and it is a direct result of the wealth and surpluses developed by major technological change and the destruction of the planet. With O.G. Jung writing at the beginning of this process, there really hasn’t been a description of this new archetypal story, that of the “club narrative”.
The basis of the Archetypal Club Story is as follows: group interest, standard-setting, recruitment, belief, and event. This is then repeated ad nauseam. Since no one has yet labeled “being on a club” as a key archetypal story, I have thus seized upon the idea. For those who doubt that the veracity of “club or die” is a universal idea, I have prepared the following bullet points:
Creating in-groups and out-groups is as old as humanity itself.
Associations are endemic to liberal democratic societies. This was first brought up by Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 work Democracy in America. I believe this quote makes a strong argument for my theory: “The most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his fellow-creatures, and of acting in common with them. I am therefore led to conclude that the right of association is almost as inalienable as the right of personal liberty.”
Especially since the rise of the Internet, the mass proliferation of communities has taken over everything. This desire to create community in the face of the dreariness of daily life has co-opted older organizations meant for a different purpose and factionalized leisure time into a series of memberships and low-cost commitments.
We’re talking about the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, CrossFit, Orange Theory Fitness, comic conventions, anti-vax Facebook groups, 20th-century Marxist revolutionary cells, rock climbing gyms, etc. Even companies, ostensibly the force that clubs react against, are trying to create “corporate cultures” based on the club model.
It’s also clear that organized religion, which in less-developed societies was the be-all, end-all arbitrator of morality, culture, politics, life, death, etc. is essentially a different type of modern club. It’s an important club, but the power of religious institutions has drastically waned in so many countries. How many people out there have “become a member of the clergy” as one of their career goals? The secularization of society can be seen as the spread of the surplus-based “club ethos” compared to the waning of a need-based “Pope ethos”. They are all competing for the same tokens of leisure time as the rest of us.
This storytelling pattern, however, does not inform the actions of the club or judge what a club does. Just like the wicked stepmother archetype is used as fodder for thousands of different stories, the club narrative can be used in a variety of contexts. Great evil and great happiness are equally possible. In a recent podcast about a woman who joined a Neo-Nazi group on WNYC’s New Yorker Radio Hour, she explained a moment where she met fellow alt-right scumbags (almost all white guys, obviously) for the first time. She’d just joined literally the worst club of all-time by becoming a Neo-Nazi event coordinator for a few months. Yet I still found it very amusing when she said (paraphrasing): “people came up to me and told me it was an honor to meet me and praised great job I’d done for the organization, even though I hadn’t done very much work...and that felt really good.”
Yeah, that’s pretty much how it goes. It does feel good to be accepted and lauded by people for doing a few hours of work-outside-work per week. We strive to maintain that narrative in spite of everything. So, what is it like to be in a club? Well, I’ll tell you all about it.
One cannot hold a cross-country race in the midst of several major Civil War battlefields and expect the Forget the Protocol recap to ignore the circumstances. There were two major engagements fought at Mechanicsville, Virginia during the Civil War. The first came in 1862 as part of the Peninsular Campaign and Seven Days Battles (the Union lost this campaign because McClellan was slow and incompetent, likely extending the war by another three years). The second came in 1864 after Union fortunes had turned, as General Grant marched down through Northern Virginia for his final attempt to besiege, strangle, and crush the Confederacy once and for all.
Pole Green Park, located just outside of Mechanicsville and situated about 10 miles north of Richmond, is a very fast cross-country course. It also made for an excellent place for thousands of Americans to die in senseless slaughter. The park made up the northernmost part of the Union line during the Battle of Cold Harbor. If you are not a Civil War buff, you’ve likely never heard of the Battle of Cold Harbor. To summarize, Grant tried to break the Confederate defensive line protecting Richmond. However, because military technology was trending toward WWI-style trench warfare, he failed. The action around last week’s cross-country venue occurred on June 2nd when the northern Union forces under Ambrose Burnside and Gouverneur K. Warren attacked entrenched Confederate positions. It was unsuccessful.
On the last day of the battle, June 3, 1864, Grant famously sent one last assault against the fortified Confederates at Cold Harbor, about six miles south of Pole Green Park. At 4:30 AM, 20,000 men, equivalent to 100 NIRCA races stacked next to each other, marched through dense fog. Somewhere between 3,000–7,000 were killed or wounded, compared to around 1,500 Confederate casualties. It was a senseless, stupid, insane attack that Grant always regretted. Although military “experts” wouldn’t understand this until 1918, sending thousands of men in a frontal assault against people with machine guns is a suicide mission.
Having to go “over the top” at Cold Harbor, Verdun, or the Somme, is one of the worst places to be in human history. This is not to glorify war or make it some heroic expedition: it’s just illustrative of the cruelty of mankind. Imagine having to run a one-mile race over shaky ground, all while under constant rifle fire. You can’t see anything in front of you because of the smoke and the fog. All you can hear and see are your friends getting ripped to shreds by bullets and the screaming of the wounded, if you are even able to sense anything. And even if you make it to the other side, you have to be focused enough to stab someone with your bayonet? It’s...impossible to imagine.
Compared to this, running a 6K or 8K seems palatable. However, I think the amount of pain and suffering felt during a cross-country race at least 20–30% of what those poor Union soldiers felt. The physical/cardiovascular pain and stress are there. The pressure and fear of time bore a hole through the mind. Running is no easy task, and in the company of runners, nothing as optional as you hope.
By 2 p.m. on Saturday, November 16, the Northwestern Track Club was completely exhausted. After a late flight from O’Hare, they’d arrived at a Washington D.C. apartment at 1:15 AM, only to leave four hours later to make it to the Alumni 6K. Nothing was optional. The hours on a cramped Spirit flight, waiting for all four races, sleeping on cold floors, running through a windswept field—the suffering was obligatory, yet it was beautiful. John McDermott steadied himself for the last race of the day. As chronicled on Strava, he had injured himself prior to the race, but he wasn’t going to travel all this way and abort the mission, so he rambled through a gritty Frosh/Soph race through the fields where Ambrose Burnside’s men fell.
John McDermott showed up in the morning before the Alumni Race, just like everyone else. He and a few other strangers cheered for me and picked up my belongings from the start line, even though we’d known each other for about 20 minutes. Tucker and I shivered and tried to focus, but the swift motion starting gun and the eruption “racing feelings” once again felt like diving into an ice-cold lake. Though I am loath to admit it, we’d been freshmen who tagged along to Nationals once. We’d slept on a floor in Miami, Ohio to save money and stood around picking up older people’s gear. We finished 9th and 17th in the NIRAC Cross Country Nationals Alumni 6K; we ran people who ran with the people who started the whole club in the first place. If a cross-country team survives for a while, it all ends up becoming one big story.
The focus turned to Nathan in the Junior/Senior race, as he cruised to a 31:13, a full minute faster than his Regionals 8K. Then, Kurstin and Emma-masquerading-as-Izzeh ran in the Women’s Championship race. They were both really tired, but they muscled through it and ran 24:59 and 25:20. Kurstin had run a marathon in Nashville two weeks before, yet still found the will to endure this insane vacation. Emma, running her first race of the season, had a tough day, but afterward, she reveled at being among cross-country runners.
“I’m just so happy to be here,” she said, repeatedly, NIRCA flags occasionally sticking out of her hair. “I missed this!”
In the Men’s Championship Race, the plan was for all of NUTC to pace off of John L. and hope to stay in touch. It was rather hilarious to see all of them finish the first mile in 5:30, sweeping past the clock like a flock of geese. That didn’t last—the crew disintegrated a few minutes later. It’s fitting that John’s last NUTC cross-country race was his best; after two years in the wilderness, he had PR’d and restored his idiosyncratic balance to the running universe. Cameron’s last NUTC cross-country race was also a PR. It was a fast course, but he earned it by rallying in the second half of the race.
It’s a miracle if a track club president has a good race at all, given the stresses and headaches of organizing the whole shebang. Adam didn’t run great. He looked stressed and miserable for four miles, but as he realized this was likely his last cross-country race for some time, he began to give everything in the last mile. He finished and smiled, as always. The two first-years, Ian and Matt, got a taste of what it’s like to run against really good competition. I’m not even sure it’s healthy for 18-year-old to be racing 8Ks, yet they gave everything and both PR’d. There was Mike, who was so cold that he’d spent most of the morning in the car. Didn’t matter, he ran great anyway. Finally, there was John D., who was only a year removed from his first-ever cross-country race at any level. Last year, I remember he asked me a dozen questions about what he should do during the first race. He didn’t know what shoes to wear, what pace to run, how to behave at the start line. Now, he looked like a grizzled veteran, and not just because of the beard. He ran 29:37, a PR.
“I never have to run again,” he joked when someone asked if he wanted to cool down.
At IHOP, everyone ate an enormous amount of food. After getting home around 6 p.m., they all left Washington D.C. at 3 AM the next morning.
Cross-country races are designed to determine the fastest runners at a specific level. There are marked differences in uniforms, form, effort level, and comfort. But despite this emphasis on competition, every single team at 2019 NIRCA Nationals shared in the collective archetype of “Club Life”. They had all paid exorbitant dues or negotiated funding for hotels, food, and rental cars. There were a thousand people running that could tell the same story. At the start, they run from their boxes and form a mass of 200–250 bodies, a mass charge of humanity through the fields often seen in 1864 and 1917, but not in these times of peace. While watching from afar, I am struck by the mass movement of people, just like Tolstoy in War and Peace and Tennyson in “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. At the start of the Women’s Championship Race, I watch as they maneuver, jostle, and charge their way toward glory.
They could all tell the same story because demographics were clear—after all, college sports are the ultimate expression of American bourgeois sensibilities (e.g. 95% of the people there were white, haha). Surrounded by this dazzling array of middle class excellency, I was reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary paragraph on World War I in Tender is the Night:
(The Siege of Petersburg, which occurred within a 30-minute drive of Pole Green Park was the continuation of the Battle of Cold Harbor that occurred during the Richmond campaign of 1864-65)
Rosemary: General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in 1865.
Dick: No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.
Cross-country isn’t war, but I can confirm that a decade of middle-class love was spent on the fields of Virginia on November 16, 2019, just as it had been spent in Van Cortlandt Park, Peoria, Portland, Ohio, Washington, Evanston, and every single piece of ground that has ever borne the weight of a runner. In the archetype of the club runner, the idealized spirit of those massive, pre-Vietnam citizen armies lives on. They were clubs too, often organized by people from the same state or county, trying to survive in a world that seemed to be plunging into chaos. Club running is a foreboding reality strangled by the chain of time, but its last breath has escaped and kept running and running, never to be contained again.
