COLUMN: Hanging with the harriers

It is a sport as demanding, if not more so, than any other.

For folks like me, my 6-5, 285 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal (laugh here) can not even fathom the concept.

Kind of like my friends from cities in which I used to live like Seattle and Portland wrapping their brains around the concept of an entire county having not a single traffic stop light.

Certainly, not everyone is cut out for the demands, lung capacity and stamina of cross country running.

When asked why I was used as an offensive lineman in football my reason (other than the obvious size thing) was that I often don’t like to drive as far as these unheralded athletes run.

Dang, I wish the post office was closer to my house kind of distance thing that so many of us experience. Mailing a letter, okay mailing a bill, who writes letters these days?, involves covering approximately ONE MILE, round-trip.

One mile to a cross country runner is like playing hopscotch on the chalk-covered front sidewalk or driveway.

I also always used the excuse for not running unless the house was on fire or someone was shooting at me was to comment on how many of those “joggers” do you see who are actually smiling? Not for a minute did I consider how gross it must be to runners to watch large, sweaty human beings crash into each other while wearing pads from head to toe.

And yet I remember cross country participants at Billings Senior High were sleek running machines, barely breaking a sweat while running along courses that involved even, wait for it, hills. Not those “hills both ways” our children hear about when we used to “walk” to school every day, battling grizzly bears and blinding blizzards of manhole cover-size flakes of snow.

I believe one of the Senior High Broncs, Julie Brown, became a star runner in college and had Olympic possibilities after out-running most, if not all, of the Montana competition those days.

And, many might argue, how do you watch a cross country meet without following the runners in a fast golf cart? They don’t make grandstands that are MILES long.

On a personal note, I reasoned that I already cover at least two sports per season at the now seven high schools I try to keep up with in Sanders and Mineral Counties.

But there is something that intrigues me about the sport that transcends into a jealous sort of admiration.

These dudes and dudettes, who daily run more than I may have in my lifetime, can be observed at the start and finish lines, which are almost always the same place.

You can stand at either of these places in awe of athletes sprinting toward the finish line having already run several miles over predetermined courses...barking dogs and oxygen demanding lungs notwithstanding.

They are an elite breed of athletes who seldom get “props” for their efforts.

So, as time and page space allow, I will try to add cross-country to my growing list of events to cover. And in the back of my mind I will be thinking, “they are doing this and no one is even shooting at them.”