The Fastest Girl in My World

Newsletter 2024-10-14

My daughter is fast. That’s both a humble brag and a warning. If Betsy wants to get away from me, I’ll never be able to catch her. After slowing down for two consecutive seasons when her body was more interested in growing than running, she experienced a resurgence this year. No child with my genetics will ever be bound for the Olympics, but that’s not what cross country is about. It’s a hundred personal battles playing out at once. The kid in last place might improve their personal best by ten seconds and win while a runner in the top five might fall behind their hated rival and lose. Those are the kinds of shifting goal posts that made me love the sport. Back when I ran, I existed in a perpetual state of both victory and defeat. I was Schrodinger’s loser. Saturday, Betsy was a complete winner, at least to me. She capped off her season with the run of her life at conference. It’s a far cry from where she was just six months ago, when puberty attempted to steal her joy. Growing-up is the worst.

Betsy was a small child in the fall of seventh grade. Then she had the growth spurt to end all growth spurts. I mean that literally because it was likely her last one. Although she would love to be a towering 5’5” someday, she probably hit her max at 5’3”. That’s enough for her to loom over her mother, Lola, who could hide behind most lawn gnomes at a meager 5’ 1 and ¾”. (She’ll tell you she’s 5’2”, but that’s a lie. Don’t let her steal that last quarter of an inch.) My children follow a very specific growth plan: They expand out and then up. Their genetic blueprints know what they’re doing. Before you add another story to your house, you have to amass the building materials. Looking back at pictures of the girls, the pattern is clear. The kids go from rail thin to adorably round to lean and taller in repeating cycles. It’s necessary and natural and will make their lives much better in the long run. In the short term, however, it’s suboptimal if your biggest goal in life is out-racing your seventh grade nemesis. Evolution didn’t optimize the human body for achieving middle school athletic glory. Natural selection still has a few bugs to work out.

After a great cross country season in the fall of seventh grade, track that spring was rough. Betsy’s times slowed down by minutes per mile. It wasn’t for lack of trying. If anything, she was working harder than ever before. There was simply more of her to haul around, but without the strength or motor skills to handle it. I didn’t know if things would ever get better for her. The changes girls go through in puberty don’t necessarily optimize them for speed. It’s different for guys, who generally experience linear athletic progress as they grow. Most dudes get bigger, stronger, and faster until their joints give out or they discover beer. For some of us, it was both. That was an amazing year of college. Nothing in biology said Betsy had to get faster as she got older. Only dumb cavewomen needed to be swift enough to outrun saber-tooth tigers. The smart ones invented guns. I couldn’t even look to my and Lola’s adolescent years as a guide. I was a 6’2” awkward, lanky runner who did ten miles a day at my peak. Lola is a short, brilliant, beautiful woman who never ran more than ten consecutive steps in her life. There was no telling what messed-up blend of genetics Betsy inherited from the two of us. I should have written her an apology card in advance. As usual, whatever she was going through was probably all my fault.

To Betsy’s credit, she never gave up. She spent seventh and eighth grade track getting lapped by girls she used to beat. She finished every race, showing up to each practice and meet with grim determination. It helped that she was friends with many girls on the team. The bus rides were always fun, even if the races themselves were torture. She focused less on personal bests for her lifetime and more on her personal bests for right now. Slowly, she regained her former speed. She dropped seconds and then minutes, all while adding inches. Her growth mode shifted from out to up. It was hard to notice the changes at first. When you see someone everyday, they always look the same, even as they transform from an infant to a teenager practically overnight. With gradual suddenness, she showed up to her freshman year this fall the size and shape of a full-grown adult. She had the muscle to match. She spent the end of middle school driving an SUV with a go-kart engine. This summer, someone installed a V8. That someone was Betsy, who built up her speed and endurance with months of early morning practices. At the start of her metamorphosis, I had no idea what kind of grown-up Betsy would turn into. By August of this year, I had my answer: a fast one.

Betsy goes to a big school with big teams. This fall, there were nineteen girls doing cross country. From the start of the season, Betsy was consistently in the top seven. When they divided into races by speed, she ran varsity. It was exciting to see her doing well again. She possesses a mental toughness that I lacked when I was her age. I used to excel when no one expected anything for me. If I was the sixth or seventh runner, which are non-scoring positions for the team’s total, I was fast and relaxed. Occasionally, I would jump up in the order and surprise everyone with a great finish. That never happened in seasons where I was one of the top runners and the team counted on me to do well. When someone I was expected to beat pulled up beside me, I tended to panic and mentally give up. That’s an easy thing to do in a sport where victory depends on who can survive self-inflicted pain the longest. I never quit, but I didn’t always compete. Betsy is a competitor to her core.

When teammates catch up to her, or when she catches up to them, she doesn’t shut down. She hangs on and waits, kicking at the end. Sometimes she pulls ahead of them and sometimes she doesn’t, but she’s always in the fight. It’s a grittiness she developed in those seasons of backward progress. When you spend years battling your own body, you stop worrying about what other runners are doing. Whether you win or whether you lose, it’s only a race against yourself. That’s the toughest opponent of all.

It’s been a blast watching Betsy’s inner fierceness come out this season. She’ll never outright win a race, but she’s crushing her goals and coming out on top of individual battles. She’s not doing too bad overall, either. Over the weeks, she worked her way up on her team from sixth to fifth to fourth. The next teammate ahead of her was one she used to run head-to-head with in sixth grade. When Betsy had her fateful growth spurt, the other girl left Betsy in her dust. Now, Betsy was back, lurking not far behind her former foe. She had come full circle. Still, the distance between them was stable, and the other girl was having a great season. It looked like everyone would hold their spots going into the final showdown.

Saturday was the conference meet. Betsy’s team had a shot to win. The starter fired his pistol, and the runners took off. Lola and I watched the start, then speed-walked to a junction point several hundred meters away. Cross country is a fun sport to spectate because you practically need binoculars for most of it. It’s the one time my excellent vision comes in handy. It doesn’t help me when I’m staring at a screen all day, but it’s extremely useful when picking out which moving spec on the horizon is my flesh and blood. A mile into the race, Betsy turned a corner and came back into view. She was in her usual spot at fourth on the team—but only a step away from her old rival in position three. The gap between them was gone. Betsy was way above her normal pace, and the other girl was off hers. That happens. It’s a tough course, and there was a severe cold rampaging through school. Cross country is all about doing whatever your body will let you get away with on any given day. Betsy was there to capitalize. Right in front of us, she surged ahead to take the third spot on the team. She’d have to hang on to it for two more miles.

Both girls disappeared from view. Several minutes later, they re-emerged on another loop. They were still neck and neck, pushing each other when the team needed them both the most. From a scoring perspective, it didn’t matter who was third and who was fourth. The team just needed them to keep moving up compared to other schools. On a personal level, however, this was for all the marbles. The stakes couldn’t have been higher if they were competing for silver and gold. Their long-simmering duel was helping them both. They were in the top fifteen overall and moving up. The meters were ticking down. There wasn’t far left to go.

The girls went out of view again. Lola and I ran one more time to see the finish. My battered knees still work in short bursts to get me where I need to go. Betsy and the other girl came down the final stretch. Two girls from other schools were right ahead of them. The spectators screamed for their respective progeny, drowning each other out in an indecipherable roar. Betsy kicked. Her rival kicked. The girls in front of them kicked. Everyone surged toward the finish line. Betsy caught both runners in front of her. Her teammate caught one. Betsy won their personal competition, if only for the day, finishing in third for her team and in eighth place overall. It had been a battle for the ages.

This picture is from a different race, but it was too cool not to share.

Afterwards, all competitiveness vanished. There were hugs and high fives all around. It’s a level of camaraderie that can only be shared by two athletes who have pushed themselves to the absolute brink of agony for no discernible reason. Runners are wired differently. The other girl’s dad came up to me afterwards to proudly tell me that both our kids had made the all-conference team, an honor that went to the top twelve finishers. Better yet, he estimated that their team won. He knew they could do it. Before the meet, he had compared times from previous races for all the runners in the area. Dads can get excited about literally anything if their kids are competing in it. If our daughters were on the croquet team, that dad would have been telling me stats about sticky wickets or whatever it is people do in that game. He was right, and our girls’ team did come in first. Even more impressively—in my completely biased opinion—Betsy was the only runner on the entire team, both boys and girls, to set a new personal best. It was a hilly course that didn’t lend itself to fast times. It was a great way to cap off a long comeback. I can’t wait to cheer for her going forward, regardless of if she speeds up or slows down. No matter what time she comes across the finish line, she’ll always be a winner to me.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James