Time of the End of the Season

By Bob Hodge

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Bob Hodge grew up in Lowell and went on to graduate from Lowell High (1973) and University of Lowell (1990). He was (and still is) one the greatest runners to come out of this region. He’s also a writer whose 2020 memoir, Tale of the Times: A Runner’s Story, is available at lala books in downtown Lowell and in Kindle format from Amazon. The following is an excerpt from his novel-in-progress.

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Just one more meet for sure unless I do well then, I get to go to New England’s again up in Maine this year. Everything is happening fast I’m a senior I got my drivers license –have to chuckle thinking about that one and now we moved and Dad remarried seems like everything changed and somewhat came together overnight.

Amazed to get that letter from KU and Bob Timmons Jim Ryun’s Coach I mean is he really interested in me? Probably sent the same letter to hundreds of kids anyway I mean I ain’tnothing special. I really got to do something about my hair what a rat’s nest I got here and graduation coming up I’m just gonnasuck it up and get the mop cut off.

I did and it felt good, I felt lighter but the trip to the local barber was torture and I had to listen to the asshole barber make fun of my hair in front of all the old neighborhood barstools and punks.

What the hell am I going to do with myself all I want to do is run myself into the ground geezus there has to be something wrong with me but it’s the only thing that lasts.

“Hey Willy, you with us?” “Yes, sir Mr. Cut, I didn’t quite hear you.” The class laughed and Mr. Cut shook his head. “Willy, you’re a space cadet you need to pay attention in my class.”

Cut was okay but his class was a bore– but at least it was easy and I could do no worse than an average grade good enough and almost over.  Just get me outa this place even when it’s good I still don’t feel right feel like the only person in the world standing in one spot and everyone else moving all around me.

I took the bus out to the stadium with the football team since I was the only cross-country runner with any season left. I met up with Coach Wild a real misnomer given how laid back and calm the guy was. He wanted me to start out and run our two-mile road loop “Willy, give it a good effort.”

I had no idea so I ran pretty nearly all out and when I came screaming back in to the stadium parking lot Coach Wild nearly swallowed his pipe. “Willy you just ran a 9:25!” “Well Coach, maybe it’s short.” “Willy, I measured it in my car and it’s a deuce, now trust me on that.”

He then had me run it again and I ran the same exact time. “Willy, you got a shot to win at All-State I only ever had a couple of kids ever run that loop under ten minutes holy friggincow man!” It was a pretty tough loop with a half mile long hill in the middle of it. Probably, and I sensed that I had run the workout way too fast but with my current mindset I really only had one gear and that was run until you nearly drop and then pick it up.

I jogged a few laps on the track and stretched out while watching the footballers go through their paces. “Man, I thought, “football is dumb-umb.” My fiend Chris came over “hey Willy, good luck at States.” “Thanks, good luck in your game, Coach and I should be back from Boston in time for the second half.”

Most of the footballers thought that they were God’s gift but when they had to sit there and applaud my sorry ass as I walked up on stage to collect that athlete of the year award a few years ago and get my photo in the papers ha. The paper had called me the “Sophomore Sensation” and later a group of footballer cretins had driven by me yelling out the window “hey look it’s the sophomore sucksation.”

I had recently been running more miles sometimes doing two runs a day but coach had warned me about doing too much and I was still growing and all that. I respected coach a lot and I knew that he had been a good athlete a middle-distance runner whose close friends called him “feets.” But I figured if I listened to him I would not be looking to win states or would I have been the AOY.

I had been reading about the great runners of the past mainly their biographies because I could relate to them and none of them ever talked about “burn out.” Famed New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard explained that a program too heavily based on interval training on the track as was practiced in the United States was the culprit and not plenty of moderate paced running that built the aerobic house.

The books provided motivation and methodology and I read them over and over again and passed them around to my teammates. I was a student of running I wanted to pursue it doggedly and was willing to exclude things that seemed to interfere. But now high school was coming to an end and college was not at all certain so how would I be a runner then and more importantly why?

It was a lot to think about so I focused on the dream of glory.

Coach gave me a ride home and wanted to talk strategy “now Willy you need to establish good position but don’t…..” His voice trailed off in my head– I had heard it all before ignored it and did what I always do because win or lose you will be tested.

In the morning I walked to the stadium to meet Coach and we drove down to Boston Franklin Park in his car stopping at HoJo’s on the way for coffee. We didn’t talk at all coach knew it was useless to try and converse with me before a race I was in another place.

I did not think about the actual race at all I just let my mind wander off with Joni Mitchells voice trailing in and out the peak fall colors the rapidly clearing sky floating past I was fixin to die a little.

Coach held my racing flats while I warmed up a bit following a ritual ceremony to become the slaughter of the lamb the petard was ticking inside me. Just slip my bare feet into those holy blessed shoes do a sharp stride and BOOM!

I walked the beach barefoot with my pant legs rolled up and a heavy hooded sweatshirt on. I began to jog and immediately felt the tightness in my hamstring conjuring up the Olympic Trials race a spot on the team within my grasp… had to laugh the hand of fate one that got away. As bad as that was at least it was an ending not like that long-ago state meet in cross country at Franklin Park when I was leading the field by fifty yards and ran off course man I have never lived that one down.

Coach was apoplectic, “Willy I told you they changed the course at the end there you pudding head how could you run right past the cones and the kid pointing the way?”

I wasn’t paying attention to coach at practice or in the classroom where he taught Algebra. I wasn’t paying attention to no cones or no kid pointing the way I was possessed channeling Pre, Ryun, Bikila, Halberg, Snell, Clarke all my heroes not to be distracted since I knew that course like the back of my hand until the peckerwoods went and changed it.

I was generally off somewhere else glory be.

I ran some good times that year setting the school records for the mile and two miles but I never did hear anything more from Bob Timmons KU or any other schools so in the end I enrolled at good old State U. just around the corner from my home but because I had done so poorly on the entrance exam I was accepted on a provisional basis.

College—What?

With the help of a guidance counselor I registered for a bunch of classes I already knew I was going to hate. I got a part time job in a supermarket bagging groceries and on my days off I made trips to the mountains or the beach.

I ran twice a day and one week hit 105 miles total. I also ran some low-key road, cross country and track races where I did well even against the older fellas.

The college scene didn’t interest me much and if it weren’t for running I probably would have just got a job and said the hell with that. I thought the whole college gig was bogus fraternities and all that but the thing is I did love to read and learn especially history and geography anything that could make me feel a sense of place or the world and my place in it.

I sat in that old worn out classroom staring out the window just like high school but beginning to get a grip on myself not so panicky or insecure –one day the world was my oyster next day I was flunking out of college.

I figured I needed a reset all the way back to primordial ooze but college was just some type of security blanket keeping me from my true next steps.

A debutante hobo hood.

Everything seemed to be an indoctrination into something dominated by sycophantic types and I wanted no part of it wanted things to be more on my own terms.

I was having trouble being a student while trying to avoid any and all responsibilities. Running was still keeping me afloat on an even keel because it was the only thing that lasted but I couldn’t play along being the dutiful student athlete forever and I knew it but was in denial.

I was reading “Babbitt” by Sinclair Lewis and had just read an essay by Jack Kerouac called “The Vanishing American Hobo” yes, I was reading this not the Economics and Statistics texts I had been assigned.

My elders shook their heads and wagged their fingers at the little subversive some with a look of resignation thinking

“Willy will come around, they all do in the end.”

I spent most of the money I had saved on a bus ticket that would take me anywhere in the country and Canada. I told my Dad I was going on a trip for the summer and intimated it had something to do with school so he wouldn’t know the truth that his son was going rogue with no definite plan.

I packed my rucksack and left early in the morning and when the driver called out “The bus to New York City” I had a moment of intense anticipation and a pang of remorse leaving my family with the wrong impression even though it was the only way out.

I was planning to visit a fellow runner an acquaintance who I had raced against a few times and who lived in Brooklyn in a very small apartment. His name was Pete and he was a law clerk attending law school and a very dedicated runner hoping to qualify for the Olympic Trials.

We would train together for a few days and if there was time he would show me a bit of the city. Pete was five years older than me but we were possessed to a similar degree by athletics and slept ate and breathed it. Pete envied me not having a job but was also worried about me bumming it around on my own a rube and rebel without a clue.

So, he set me up with some fellow runners I could contact and get together with in other parts of the country. I marveled at my luck to get this kind of support from my fellow dreamers– runners stuck together.

I ran early in the mornings with Pete usually a ten miler and when he went off to work I went back to sleep on his couch. I bought a few groceries and made simple meals pasta or cans of tuna. Pete had a nice collection of books for me to browse and read and also played guitar as did I and he let me mess around with it.

At night we did another ten or went to a local track to meet up with a group and run some intervals. Back at the apartment we talked athletics and books and Pete gave me lots of practical advice. He hit the hay early and I would read for some time before falling asleep. I ended up staying for a week and was loath to leave. But it was time to go– next stop Denver CO.

I awoke from my dream state on the couch where I had drifted off after my run and in my dream, I was back in that summer of Willy on the bus to Denver where I had awoken in the night to the sight and feel and smell of a dark-haired woman’s head asleep on my shoulder.

I watched her intently wondered should I wake her when she opened her eyes and looked into mine and right through me and she smiled and lay her head back down and I put my arm around her shoulder held her and fell asleep.

What a summer and now just a memory. I got up to make some tea all a part of the little routine I had established retired from full time work puttering around writing and never getting too far with any of it which was okay—just mental exercise at this point with an occasional eureka moment.

I sipped my tea and remembered calling my Dad from California to tell him I was not going back to school that I had essentially flunked out when I stopped attending classes regularly. I told him I was studying running, how to become a better athlete and I was learning from some of the best in the country—visiting with them and training with them.

“Okay son, be careful and stay in touch.” That was all he said.

I went to shower have more tea and toast and sit down to read my rejections from myriad publishers but there was that one who offered helpful suggestions and encouraged me that what I was doing was a worthy pursuit, that was nice.

I wrote for an hour took another nap eager to return to my dreams, had more tea and went for another easy run on the trails.

Luckiest man alive.

Penny and I got off the bus together in Denver. She was travelling light as well with her rucksack but it was unclear where she was heading, she spoke fluent Spanish and struggled with English. I cursed not paying more attention in my two years of Spanish classes in high school. If I had known I would meet a Penny…

From a pay phone I called my contact in Boulder Jack, a fellow runner who I had met once back in Boston. “Willy, if you are ever in Boulder…” Now here I was. I explained about Penny and initially they were not pleased, “Okay Willy, but besides me and Billy here I got a paying guest coming in next week.”

Jack drove down to pick us up and we stopped for provisions on the way. Turned out Jack spoke passable Spanish and Penny said that she wanted to cook a good meal for us. Jack and I split the cost for the food.

It turned out we all loved having Penny around and one day we drove up to Switzerland Trail and she ran with us for several miles and at that point we were all completely smitten with her. I thought about staying in Boulder, “Willy, you could get a job with me at the café and Penny too.”

Penny called her family in California and they insisted she come right away and “leave the gringo behind.” I told her that I wanted to travel with her but in the morning, she was gone. Jack had given her a ride to the station. My first impulse was to go after her and then I found the note she left me.

Adios la amante…

Willy dream sequence

I awoke and fell out of my little bed not quite sure where I was “oh shit ya I’m at the cabin.”

Dreams sequence won’t let me be can’t write fast enough feel like it’s all shit but it don’t matter no more.

I thought about Penny every day all my life even more so now old aged her note lost but burned in my memory how she lifted me made me a better man. All of nineteen I was.

Boulder was brilliant all of sky and mountains a fairy tale land but the reality of my compatriots working eight to ten hours a day as baristas running on a hope and dream while in noble pursuit left me wanting needing to make further discoveries.

Heading to California but first a friendly competition a mountain race nine miles up Pat’s Peak.

It would be a good test against these mountain types a different breed from the usual track road cross country type athlete. These fellas were kamikaze and usually raced both up and down—no thank you.

The trail was good footing starting out not rocky and rutted like others we had run. After a couple of miles of what felt like easy running one runner started to assert himself—Pablo the local legend. I stayed a respectful distance behind him and the rest of the pack fell steadily behind us. I was happy he took it and I felt sure that I could hang with him but it was getting tough and we were only half way up.

There was not hardly anyone on this section of trail and all I could hear were our breathing and footfalls almost in unison. The altitude was having an affect on me playing with me legs rubbery I decided it was time to shake things up and so I came alongside Pablo but he wasn’t letting me pass he put up a fight all the way to the finish we were throwing round house punches at each other and with the finish in sight without saying a word we joined hands and raised our arms in triumph together.

I stopped momentarily not having reckoned how I would get back down I guess only one way and I started my long walk jog down to the trail head as the round trippers steadily passed me I just walked on and enjoyed the views.

California here I come.

Jack and Billy and I bought some cheap beer, hot dogs and veggies for a salad and had a little party my going away the next day. I had never been to California but I did have a contact in Oakland and another in San Diego. A small slice of the running community stopped by to send me off including Pablo my rival on the mountain. I tried to convince him to compete in cross country nationals at least but he just smiled “Willy, I been there done that nothing left there for me. I got my job making deliveries and good thing because I got five kids and another on the way.”

Pablo was 35 years old but he could pass for a teenager. Most of the runners here were serious racers either on their way to the top or heading back down to the bottom. I didn’t meet many “fun runners” though we racers certainly had our share of fun chasing our ultimate potential.

Jack and Billy took me to the bus stop in the morning and I climbed aboard with my rucksack and a shopping bag full of peanut butter sandwiches. The plan was for me to stop back by here on my way back east if things worked out that way hey, that’d be alright.

Figured I would never get lucky enough to meet up with another pretty girl on a bus trip but I was wrong. The bus barely left the station when a young woman sat beside me and introduced herself. “Hi Willy, I work with Jack at the Café he told me to look out for you, my name is Maureen all the guys call me Mo.”

“Oh Wow, Jack never said anything.” Mo smiled, “Ya, I asked him not to wanted to sneak up on you take you by surprise.”  Well this really is the summer of Willy then and Mo told me her story heading home to San Francisco for her brother’s wedding. “Hey Willy, how you feel about weddings?” “Fine, long as it’s not mine” “You want to come as my date? I just broke up with my boyfriend.”

“Love to, but I don’t have any threads and no money to buy any.” “My brothers got you covered and you can stay at my parents house with me until I head back after the wedding.”

I told Mo all my hopes and dreams and plans and schemes and it turned out she had many of the same dreams as an athlete she had been a California State Champion in the 1500M. How did this happen to Willy never had a date in high school and meet two beautiful women in just a few weeks.

By the time we hit the state line Mo and I were making out and holding hands and all that good stuff another Greyhound romance, who said bus rides were long and boring?

Mo’s family were wealthy and they lived in an actual mansion on a hill. I felt out of place right from the get go. Her brothers looked at me as if I were some kind of stray their sister picked up on the bus well I guess that’d be right. I went along with things for a few days enjoyed the extravagance, one day I asked Mo, “honey don’t you feel embarrassed?” “Why Willy?” “I mean all this wealth and so many we know going hungry.”

“Willy, my family do a lot of giving but why do you think I am out in Boulder making coffee?”

“I know Mo, you want to make it on your own.”

When everyone was occupied I packed up and snuck out the back door down to the highway and stuck out my thumb. And there she was like a Beach Boy’s vision of California, good blonde in a VW Bug pink convertible with the license plate, BUBBLZ. I threw my rucksack in the back and hopped in, she never even asked where I was heading.

Summer of Willy was now on steroids.

Time of the Season: