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I don’t know where Eugene’s runners go in winter. Are they on treadmills in cold damp basements? Curled up on couches, hibernating? Are they chasing the sun in other parts of the globe, or just looking at the calendar and waiting for the page to turn to April?
Perhaps I’ll never know. What I do know is that every spring they emerge like daffodils to populate the trails and sidewalks and high school tracks of the Willamette Valley.
It’s like watching the return of the lions to their hunting grounds. But not just lions: gazelles and cheetahs and kangaroos! Everywhere you go in Eugene, people are running, leaping, jumping. We are spring-loaded, gravity-defiant and clearly solar powered.
In April, Hayward Field awakes from its slumber. I know because from our backyard, we can hear the dulcet tones of the crowd, cheering as the athletes come around the Bowerman Curve and sprint to the finish line.
Whether I’m in the stadium or out, that roar is one of my favorite sounds on earth.
Here in Track Town, we are not every-four-years friends of the track scene. The big-name runners, the jumpers, the throwers — they come every summer for the big Hayward events. Many of them live and train here. We know our Crousers from our Hockers, our Richardsons from our Allmans. These are our athletes.
Spring is a good time to be in Eugene.
After every track meet, the athletes queue up outside Prince Pückler’s for a waffle cone because, hey, they’ve earned it. And I feel as if I’ve earned it too, cheering them on from my strawberry patch, so sometimes I join them. I am like a Lilliputian among giants, all of them lithe and muscled, living their lives of peak physicality.
Just standing there, shoulder-to-shoulder with the Greek gods of this mortal realm, I feel my middle-aged, shrinking frame grow two inches taller.
I was not blessed with athletic genes, a fact my kids lament. If I had, say, the physique of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, perhaps they would have had a shot at the NBA or the NFL, or at least a glancing mention on Hayward’s jumbotron.
“Why did I have to have parents who are writers?” my son exclaims from time to time. This is usually when I’m measuring him against the door frame, where we draw lines with dates for how each kid has grown over the last decade. He has an everlasting dream of reaching 6 feet, and my 5-foot-2-inch stature seems to be all that stands in his way.
“Because,” I say in response to his question, “when it comes to crafting a killer college essay, my one and only skill will come in clutch.”
To which he reminds me that — thanks to ChatGPT — my one and only skill is quickly becoming obsolete.
But the great thing about living in Track Town is that you don’t have to be 6 feet tall, or an athlete at all, to feel like one. Every year we set our alarms to be at the starting line for the Eugene Marathon. Granted, I have never run the Eugene Marathon, but pretty much half the town is out there. We always cheer dozens of friends as they pass by.
It is inspiring to see the waves of runners take off in their springy shoes and water vests, bib numbers quivering in anticipation. People dressed like bananas, people in tulle skirts and ladybug headbands, people who look like they might not make it to the end of the block, let alone 26.2 miles, people who take off at a full-on sprint and gas out before they reach the first turn. Last year we spotted a guy running in skin-tight jeans, no shirt.
I love them all, all humanity churning down Agate Street.
I always get a little teary eyed, and my son peers at my face and says, “Mom are you crying?” I sniffle and say, “Maybe a little, but it could also be the pollen count.”
After the crowd has cleared, we trundle home, eat a stack of pancakes and crawl back into bed, feeling nothing but accomplishment. Inspiration through osmosis.
Because this is what it’s like to live in Track Town. You lace up your Nikes, find your padded seat in Hayward, and cheer until your voice has done 98 laps around the track, after which you reward yourself with a salted caramel waffle cone.
We’re all athletes here. And it sure tastes sweet.
