Last week, I held my annual youth running camp. While engaging with the middle and high school kids, I reflected quite a bit about my years as a beginning runner their age. Despite being 40 years on from my first half marathon, as I look ahead 6 months to the incredible adventure of the 777 World Marathon Challenge, I can still trace many of the central values I hold as a coach and an athlete to these formative years, thanks to a very unique school program.
I grew up in a small suburb outside of Seattle, where our middle school offered a revolutionary alternative PE program. Pioneered by a legendary language arts teacher with a family military background who was inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s early 1960s focus on physical fitness, we 7th and 8th graders turned what seemed like impossible, or at least improbable, physical tasks into regular occurrences.
After interviewing for the program the previous spring, we met for the final period of the school day. Instead of basketball, flag football, or softball like a typical PE class, we ran a route outlined on the chalk board on Mondays and Wednesdays, and bicycled Tuesdays and Thursdays. If, like me, you preferred running more, you also had that option. On Fridays, we played team games such as Capture the Flag in the forest or a nearby park. On Saturdays or Sundays, she often organized day hikes in area national parks.
All of these tasks led up to a series of challenges: Running a half marathon (preferably under 2 hours), cycling a century, surviving overnight with a partner in the woods with only a coffee can’s worth of supplies for shelter and food, running approximately 29 miles from our town to the city of Tacoma in one day, canoeing about 15-16 miles, completing a triathlon, and walking on stilts up a .75 mi hill (if you fell, you needed to start over again and again until you made it). We’d occasionally take on a “quick dip,” where the running route would take the class to the Lake. We’d all jump in the typically freezing water, and run back to school.
Taking a cue from President Kennedy’s revival of a Teddy Roosevelt era admonition for Marines to prove fitness by walking a 50 mile hike in 20 hours, our entire class would walk the entire shoreline of Lake Washington each year. We covered 55 miles - running the final half mile - in 22 hours, beginning at 4:30am and finishing at 2 or 2:30 am the next day. Summers, students could opt into unassisted and lengthy bike trips to amazing places, most famously across the country from Seattle to the White House lawn to meet President Nixon in 1971.
While later iterations of my running journey revolved more conventionally around achieving fast times and seeking competitive accomplishments at the high school and college levels, nothing laid the groundwork for how I view athletics like this class, simply called “Outdoor Fitness,” or “OF.”
Fran Call, the legendary woman who spearheaded this effort, conveyed upon her students a very specific worldview. Other than the occasional general goal setting like hitting the half marathon under 2 hours, she did not emphasize speed, but rather persistence and self-sufficiency. Our town had plenty of hills and our running routes reflected that, but walking was not allowed during these runs. While it may sound harsh, this pushed us to stay focused and to remain mentally committed to our task. We built up distance gradually, but completion was always the desired goal. Years later, when approaching my first adult marathon, I had concerns about various issues, but looking back, I had none at all about whether or not I would be committed until the finish line. This was a huge asset to carry into a lifetime of endurance activities.
Secondly, with OF, there was a huge emphasis on the collective. Whenever we did an out and back route, it was mandatory behavior to give a “good job” and a high five to everyone you passed. When doing our 55 mile walk or any weekend hike, waiting to make sure the person behind you could see the next turn was a baseline expectation. If you got caught up chatting with friends or failed to take that responsibility seriously, you found yourself bringing up the rear on the next section of the hike or walk (as I did a couple times). For many of us, running can be a very individual pursuit, but looking for community among other fellow travelers on epic adventures, team contexts, and even just having other folks to show up to on a weekly basis can make all the difference. Acknowledging our fellow runners on the road and trail can also seem like a lost art in today’s day and age. For any of us in OF, that lesson and that sense of responsibility for the collective was imprinted early and indelibly, and I think of it often in my daily life.
Within our weekly schedule, we had the chance to run, to bicycle, to walk on stilts, to play team games in the park, to rest, to hike, to canoe, and participate in a variety of other disciplines. While many of the primary tasks were based on running or walking, OF mixed it up for us. That allowed some parents to take part, for students to develop additional athletic skills and lead in different ways, and for us to have a wide range of athletic experiences assisting as we built our endurance for very specific running or walking tasks. Most of us love running or we wouldn’t be embarking on this challenge next January, but maintaining a variety of activities is an evergreen way to keep us mentally and physically fresh and ready, particularly as we age.
Perhaps when telling others about your next planned adventure, you have become used to a response of “That’s crazy!” For each of us, inflection points in our journey led us to believe what seemed crazy to most was instead possible, achievable, and as such, enjoyable as a challenge. For me and many others through the years, Outdoor Fitness provided a completely new lens through which we could approach the difficult things that lay ahead athletically and otherwise. I look forward to hearing some of these stories from all of you along our journey as we tackle this next challenge together.