A scrawl of mud-splattered, long-sleeve T-shirts stretches through the field in front of me. The sun is deeply muffled under the low-hanging English clouds. We’ve just plunged through a series of knee-deep, ice-cold puddles, which elicited several shouts of profanity, and I could not be having more fun.
As an undergraduate, I raced for the varsity cross-country and track teams at Stanford. Running was a defining experience of my time among the palm trees, but putting away my racing spikes also brought a sense of relief—it had been an all-consuming existence, and I was ready to move on.
It was with a relish that I instead took to recreationally running throughout the Oxford countryside. You cannot imagine a more complete cross-country runner’s playground—meandering, flat canal paths; steep hills traversing ancient forests; ruins of abbeys and churches; cows and sheep and fields. Once you’re out of the confines of the city, which takes just a moment or two, you can go for miles and miles and see only the occasional other adventurer.
But after a couple of years of solo running, I began to miss the companionship of a team. The captain of the Oxford cross-country team, a petite, enthusiastic and perceptive law student, casually asked me to come along to a relay race. As England is a country where collegiate athletic endeavors really are at the amateur level, there are no rules regarding years of eligibility. I ran in the race. And in the next. And before I knew it, I was going to practices not for the training but for the people—friends—who would be there.
Because there’s something about running alongside someone that opens you up. Secrets become more easily shared; intimacy grows faster. You realize that over the past hour, a woman you’ve met only once before has revealed to you the practical, day-to-day reasons why her divorce has been so difficult. You learn that a friend, whom you’ve known casually for years, deeply regrets his choices after college and is now feeling terrified about what to do next. I’ve had many of these exercise-induced conversations over the years, but I just recently, finally, started having them in England. And I’ve again found the ethereal support you feel when you’re part of this strange community—a community where new long-run routes are exciting and eating spoonfuls of all-natural peanut butter is just routine.
Racing as part of the team at Oxford is certainly different from doing so at Stanford. There is not the same deeply felt sense of purpose, nor the sense of gravity of our performance. Instead, there is a playful gutsiness, which probably partly comes from the culture of running throughout the country. Weekend races through streams and over logs will draw competitors ranging in age from 10 to 65. Many events are only just introducing electronic timing. Our home cross-country race start was marked with a line of flour.
So for now, I’m part of this loosely organized team, all of us strung in a line across a rain-drenched meadow.And in a country so similar to—yet deceivingly different from—my own, it’s wonderful to have such a simple, common bond: We all love to run.
Kate Niehaus, '10, MS '11, is pursuing a DPhil in biomedical engineering at the University of Oxford.
