What excellent timing.

Over the past week, two very inspiring stories have made their way to me. The first is about Sami Stoner, an Ohio cross-country runner who almost didn’t get to race. The second details the training regimen of Simon Wheatcroft, who’s preparing for his first ultra marathon.

Though these athletes, and their struggles, are unique, they’ve had to overcome the same handicap. Sami Stoner and Simon Wheatcroft are both blind.

To discover their stories now seems felicitous because tomorrow holds the Philadelphia chapter of Visionwalk. I’ll be walking with my own wife, a marathoner and year-round runner. Like Sami, she suffers from Stargardt’s, a juvenile form of macular degeneration.

Having watched Mrs. Turtlerunner adapt to her deteriorating vision, I felt personally affected by these stories; Simon and Sami, like my wife, refuse to let their handicap keep them from the sport they love. But the hope they’ve inspired isn’t just for those affected by vision disorders, or runners, or even athletes. When they run, they demonstrate an ability inherent in all of us.

They deny limitation.

(If you would like to help fight vision disorders, please consider donating to The Foundation Fighting Blindness)

Many of my college teammates like to memorize the big names in running. They pore over records and evaluate and reevaluate runners, both historic and contemporary. They talk about these guys the way most talk about football stars.

I never entered these conversations. I had nothing to say, because I just give running history the same level of scrutiny. I never had much of a memory for names and numbers, and furthermore, I just didn’t much care. I’m self-centered like that. I focus on breaking my own records, not venerating others’.

And so it came to be that I met one of the greats without even knowing it. I was at the High School XC banquet, eating and waiting for my part in the presentation to begin. There was a small, unassuming man sitting next to me at the Coach’s table, asking me about my running background. I took him for a parent of one of our athletes, displaced. He was pleasant, though, and spoke with a slight Irish accent that inclined me to like him.

He had introduced himself as Marcus O’Sullivan. Many of my college friends would have recognized the name; I, on the other hand, didn’t know that Marcus O’Sullivan is the name of a former Olympic runner. It wasn’t until the head coach introduced him that I found out this guy had won three golds in the Summer games, or that he is one of only three people to have broken the 4-minute-mile over one hundred times (!).

I like to say that I don’t care about finishing times. They don’t always reflect effort, and it’s effort that I respect. But a 3:33 mile… I’m going to say that Mr. O’Sullivan wasn’t coasting on talent. I don’t think that anyone can go that fast for that long without an iron will.

And here he had been, listening patiently while I told him about my own adventures. I was humbled, and a little embarrassed.

Mr. O’Sullivan did have a great message for the high-schoolers. He talked about being a small kid in Ireland who yearned to be an athlete. He idolized the powerful mid-distance runners whom he would later race and beat. And he climbed to the top through hard work and discipline more than any talent.

He began and ended his speech by saying that the lessons he learned through running apply to life in general. That his experiences had implications bigger than mere sports. Mr. O’Sullivan, I could not agree more.

This past weekend held PA’s statewide race at Hershey. Since none of the boys qualified, I didn’t drive out to watch the competition. I did still scan Penntrack.com, just to see how the races went. I also wanted to see if there was any acknowledgment of the two girls we did send to Hershey.

The article written on the AAA girls’ meet made the event seem pretty standard. Lots of insanely fast girls competing for the state title, just like every other year. Lots of scores and rankings. And then there’s this (click if the font’s too small on your browser):

In a brief side note, the writer mentions a girl who, while racing, was attacked by a deer. And not just any deer, but a rogue deer. Which, judging by that description, looks something like this:

The suspect, raging against the draconian laws of deer society.

On a more serious note, though, this girl was pretty roughed up. It seems she was actually rammed by the deer, which history shows us is no laughing matter. Kara herself suffered a fracture above her eye and a “slight” concussion. Luckily, she’s a state-level cross country runner- being tough as nails is sort of a prerequisite for that. As it says in the article, she was on her feet and okay within a few hours.

Late Saturday afternoon, I found myself standing over my bathroom sink, wiping flecks of shaving creme off my ears. I was clean shaven for the first time in two weeks.

I was done.

The top runners had been growing out our beards to bring luck to our one last race together. And now it was over.

It was a bitter, bittersweet realization. I ran my last cross-country race ever. I am no longer an xc athlete.

I got a little depressed, standing over the sink. But why? After all, I’m still a runner. I haven’t lost anything that makes me who I am.

As I washed my xc career down the sink, I felt a little ashamed for getting so down. I’m 22 years old; my running career is just beginning. I want to shuffle through marathons and even ultras before I die.

So let’s just keep cross country at what it was: an apt beginning for another turtle runner.

Okay, hopefully you came here in response to an update on your RSS feed– which is to say, you haven’t given up on me yet. I’ve finished with the most hectic part of my semester (knock on wood), which means that regular updates should resume.

Anyway, the chaos pervading my academic life has crept into my running season. It’s not that my training suffered from school– it’s that my training was complicated by a number of factors. A LOT has happened that I would have loved to express through this medium.

In summary:

I somehow tore the sheath that encases my front calf muscle, which landed me in a boot for a week while they tested me for a stress fracture. I only found out two weeks ago that my running season was not, in fact, over. Since then I’ve been running my balls off (the injury isn’t as bad as it sounds) and going through rehab with the trainers here at school.

Next weekend is regionals, my very last race as a cross country athlete. Ever.