Steeplechase Reminds Me Of Home

I was kicking back on a Sunday morning on Father's Day watching the Olympic trials when up popped the steeplechase competition.

I've always found steeplechase a little fun to watch - grown men and women splashing through water and jumping over hurdles for no apparent reason. It's a little out of place in the otherwise clean track and field events, if you don't count the errant official or photographer who Wanders about and gets lanced by a javelin. But, lancing people isn't an event, is it? Maybe it should be for the paparazzi. Now that would be a fun sport to watch.

Steeplechase always reminds me of disaster movies or panicked people running from the undead. But, deep down, steeplechase reminds me of running scared through Brooklyn's projects;
pick a reason:

Running from the undead crack heads.

Being chased by a bunch of guys who want your new Nike sneakers was usually a good one.
Or running from a red-sneaker-clad gang called the Jolly Stompers who were known for deriving pleasure from stomping their victims into submission.

Now that I think of it, I really had to be alert in NYC. On any given day you were liable to be running from Puerto Rican gangs or Italians, or white boys or the brothers. Brooklyn had real, unspoken boundaries. You had to be in shape to continue growing up in Brooklyn.

Oh, how about running from a girlfriend's brother and his larger-than life, armed friends who didn't approve of you. Another good one was hearing your mother call you from a mile away and trying to get back home before she got really mad at you because you were supposed to stay where she could see you.

Another was, of course, if you stole something...
Uh, like a cucumber from a neighboring building's vegetable garden... Yeah, that's it!

I am still taken by how swiftly and deftly I and others navigated abandoned cars, sharp turns, other runners, puddles, short fences - tall fences - chain link fences, vagrants, barking and chasing stray or guard dogs, nodding and weaving heroine addicts and their cousins, the methadonians, alcoholics, police, turn corners at full speed, bounce off things and keep balance, splash through Johnny Pump spray, dodge speeding cars, loose gravel, cobble stones or dirt roads, bound up flights of stairs, and reach my front door with hands raised.
It's... It's a world record!
No ass-whippin' for you!

Of course I applied my ghetto running talents to good use in high school cross country and did pretty well city and statewide. Got a trophy too, but my ex-wife threw so much of my stuff away. If ever there was a time to run from something or someone, she was it.

Our Music And Art track team, clad in sky blue and burgundy, ran our practices and meets through McCombs Park in the Bronx. That was fun. You start in the clear and then run into the woods. Just like Brooklyn, but without someone chasing you. My track times were good, but never great unless I imagined someone was chasing me. Unmotivated running could get you arrested in the 'hood where not getting caught was the always the desired goal.

Prospect Park was my other training ground. Ah, Prospect... I got my first 10-speed bike stolen from under me there. Good times.

The park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the same guys who designed Central Park were streams, lakes, ponds, paddle boats, Wandering paths, Civil War monuments, stone bridges, a Quaker cemetery, band shells, marble-floored gazebos, covered benches, Rastafarians, oh, and gangs too. I think they were The Lords, or the knights on the south side near park west, if memory serves.
Jeez it was while I was in grade school at P.S. 154 when a gang member got stabbed in there. Guess, he didn't run.

Slower runners who got caught were usually the wily ones more often than not; the ones who were good at banking (bribes) or pimpin' (smooth mouthpieces) or stuff like that.

Heck, I still think the ghetto was and is the best, untapped training ground for mental toughness needed to create successful Olympic athletes (among other things) just because it was a place where the race did go to the swift and the fight to the strong.
It's a place of perseverance.