I Faced the Cold
by Steve McGill
The year was 1984. In the spring of my senior year of high school. I was preparing to run my first race since being let out of the hospital three months earlier. The temperature had dipped into the forties, windy. I didn’t want to run in this weather. More than anything, I feared fatigue. I feared the fatigue that I had felt when running this same race a year ago. I feared the feeling that my lungs were bursting, that my leg muscles were locking up, that I wouldn’t be able to finish. Last year, at the beginning of the outdoor season, that death feeling occurred around the sixth hurdle in a 300m hurdle race. Then, by the middle of the season, it occurred around the 4th hurdle. Then, by the end of the season, it occurred by the second hurdle. I didn’t know what was wrong. I thought I was just out of shape. Five months later, in October of my senior year of high school, I was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. That’s when it all made sense.
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This rare blood disease was characterized by low blood cell counts. Symptoms included extreme fatigue, internal bleeding, bruising, and susceptibility to infection. I experienced plenty of the fatigue, and plenty of the bruising. Red splotches would inexplicably appear on my forearms, or my feet, and then disappear within a day. Throughout the summer between my junior and senior years, my conditioning level steadily deteriorated. I went from running 2 miles a day in June to barely being able to make it half a mile by the time school started up again. I didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t know why I was always so tired.
The diagnosis, therefore, was a relief. I finally had an answer. I finally knew that I wasn’t merely out of shape.
The treatment for my illness had left me very weak. After spending most of November lying down in a hospital bed, I spent another two weeks largely lying in my own bed at home. Gradually though, I built my strength back up. I started by running half a mile, then built up to a mile, then gradually built up to three miles before I started doing light sprint workouts on the grass. Two months after being discharged from the hospital, my doctor informed me that all my blood counts were either at or above normal. Most importantly, he told me I could train with my teammates again.
For two months — from mid-January to mid-March — I got myself back into track shape, into hurdling shape, into race shape. By the time of our first meet, only two sprinters on our team were too fast for me to keep up with in training sessions. Among the hurdlers, it was becoming clear that I was the best in the group, as I had been in March of my junior year, before the symptoms of aplastic anemia had begun to debilitate my body.
For the first meet, my coach decided I should just run the 300m hurdles, not the 110’s, as running the 110’s in this weather cold lead to injury. Although the 110’s was my favorite race, I agreed with my coach. No need to risk pulling my hamstring and missing most of the season after coming back from a life-threatening blood disease. Still, I did want to compete, and the 300’s seemed to be the perfect event in which to announce my return to the track.
So there I was, wrapped up in heavy warm-up clothes, wearing gloves on my hands and a hood over my head. Now that I was out there in this nasty weather, I had second thoughts. Do I really want to race today? Shouldn’t I wait for a warmer day? How fast can I run in weather like this anyway?
No one had any expectations for me. Even though I was a senior, and a captain, I was not expected to lead the team to victory, or to carry a heavy workload. My coaches and teammates were amazed that I was back on the track at all. If I tapped my coach on the shoulder and told him I’d rather not run today, he wouldn’t have objected. I told myself that if I did decide to go ahead and run, there would be no pressure. Just finish the race would be the goal. Even if I finished last, my coaches and teammates would be impressed. To them, I was already a hero just by being out there.
As I warmed up for the race, I told myself that, yes, I’d try to just make it through. No goals, just finish. But after a few minutes, I changed my mind. I’m not sure why. I guess something inside me wasn’t satisfied with the notion of not giving it my best. Without talking to my coach nor any of my teammates — not even my fellow hurdlers with whom I was warming up — I made the silent decision that I was going to go for it. I didn’t know how fast I could run; I hadn’t competed healthily in the 300 meter hurdles since my sophomore year. But I decided I was going to find out how fast I could run. As the starter called me and my opponents to our marks, I took off my sweat clothes, took off my gloves, shook out my legs, and settled into my starting blocks.
I got out well and forgot about the cold as my love of hurdling and my immersion in the rhythm of the race took over my consciousness. I was waiting to hit the dreaded wall, to feel my quadriceps tighten up, for my breaths to turn into gasps, but it never happened. All those 400’s I had done with the quarter milers the past two months proved to provide me with a level of speed-endurance I had never had before.
I ended up running a personal best that day. And I won the race. My teammates and coaches ran up to me and congratulated me for winning, and for going above and beyond expectations. What I was most proud of, though, was not the race itself, but the approach I had taken to it. I took a chance, I faced my fear, I faced the cold, I ran my race.
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