Lifelong lessons from being an athlete at Lawrence
By Douglas Hyde Powell, ’56
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2005
Recently, many selective colleges and universities have come under criticism
for allowing the balance between intercollegiate athletics and academics
to tilt too strongly in favor of maintaining a competitive athletic program.
In Reclaiming the Game (Princeton University Press, 2003), former
Princeton University President William G. Bowen and former All-American collegiate
athlete Sara Levin argue that the Ivy League universities and many private
liberal arts colleges, even though they do not provide athletic scholarships,
nonetheless favor the admission of recruited athletes, athletes who often “underperform” academically.
At Lawrence, we believe that NCAA Division III athletics, as conducted by
the college, is both a complement to and enhancement of a well-rounded liberal
education. Author Douglas Powell’s reflections on how his participation
in cross country left a lasting impression is further testimony to the continuing
value of the scholar-athlete tradition at Lawrence. — Ed.
A few Octobers back I visited the Lawrence campus to give
a lecture about my research on optimal aging. My hosts asked if there were
things I would
like to do beforehand, and they seemed politely puzzled by my interest
in attending a practice of the cross-country team. They could not have
known that being a member of the Vikings cross country team had been a big
part
of my life at Lawrence a half-century ago.
The runners were stretching in the basement of Alexander Gymnasium when
we arrived on that drizzly fall afternoon. The coach asked them to introduce
themselves. Striking to me was how poised they were, and how bright they
seemed. Several were double majors — e.g., “cognitive neuroscience
and biology.” Then the coach asked me to say a few words. Unlike those
undergraduates who thought so well on their feet, I found myself tongue-tied,
unable to articulate the jumble of flashbacks and disorganized thoughts that
suddenly flooded my mind.
Since that October afternoon, I’ve had a chance to organize my thoughts
about how running with the Vikings made a difference in my life at Lawrence
and in the past half-century. Here is what I would have liked to have said
to those young athletes:
Being an athlete at Lawrence
Coming to Lawrence University was the first really good decision I made
in my life. (The second was marrying Ginny Stone, also Class of ’56).
For me, coming to an unfamiliar city and college was a big, scary deal. I
knew none of my new classmates, and those I met intimidated me.
Trying out for the cross-country team gave me the opportunity to meet right
away a dozen or so students with whom I shared something in common, gave
me a feeling that there was something at Lawrence I might do competently,
and provided this insecure freshman a small place in the college scene.
That first fall, I was better at cross-country running than at anything
else in my life. Part of the reason is that I spent long hours training
to be
a competent distance runner. By contrast, I was willing to settle for
whatever grades a few hours of study a week would earn me. How well I finished
in
next Saturday’s race meant far more than a grade on a chemistry exam
the day before — and my mediocre transcript from that first year at
Lawrence proved it. Yet, at graduation I looked back on a reasonably successful
academic — as well as athletic — career and looked ahead
to graduate school at Harvard.
How did such a miraculous change come about? It started with Freshman
Studies. I vividly recall our first assigned reading, Plato’s Republic. The
message was crystal clear: Lawrence expected me to be a student first and
an athlete second. I’d better get serious about my courses or that
trip home at Christmas would be one-way.
Though I had seen the light, years of bad habits did not peel away easily.
The very hard job of disciplining myself to be a competent student was
eased by encouragement from three of the best teachers I’ve ever
had. Warmed by their encouragement and understanding, their academic
standards for me
eventually became my academic standards for me.
I never ran long distances competitively again after leaving Lawrence,
and I can’t say that I’ve missed it. Yet, there was a time
many years ago when running with the Vikings was the most important part
of my college
experience, and the lessons drawn from those autumn afternoons remain
a part of me.
Here are four things that cross-country running taught me, along with
a few examples of how they have influenced my life.
1. Learning a work ethic
By “work ethic,” I mean the ability to push yourself to train
very hard, nearly every day, for the better part of a semester to achieve
a goal. There are no miracles in cross country. To be able to run as
well as you can, you commit yourself to hundreds of hours and hundreds of
miles
of rigorous training. No one is exempt.
Long-distance running teaches persistence in adversity. You develop the
capacity to work out day after day, running when you hurt or when you
don’t
feel right, running in the rain and the sleet, running in the November gloom
and against the icy wind, running when you would rather be doing almost anything
else. And it pays off. Though I never experienced the “runner’s
high,” I do know what it’s like to feel callused and hardened,
strong and fast, ready for Saturday morning.
Cross country instilled in me a mature work ethic that had not developed
from prior academic and life experiences. Four years at Lawrence prepared
me for the fact that I wasn’t going to be an intellectual standout,
and I’ve had this reality verified many times. Still, as a 21-year-old,
with four cross-country seasons behind me, I felt in my heart that, if
hard work and persistence mattered in getting to where I wanted to go,
I just
might make it. Whatever my life has amounted to in the years beyond college
is due in large measure to the ferocious work ethic built into me during
those fall afternoons.
2. Learning pace and patience
Learning to discipline yourself to run at a pace that enables you to
finish the race, while running about as hard as you can, is essential
in cross
country. This knowledge grows out of a season of training, of over-distance
work and endless mile repeats, learning how hard to push your body when you
are tired and hurting, so
that eventually
you learn how to meter out your energy to deliver a maximum performance
over several miles.
Distance runners learn to be patient too. Preparation for the big races
will require lots of practices, and there will be good ones and not-so-good
ones.
You come to understand that how well you run when it counts is a result of
months of regular, diligent practice, not just that last workout; you
come to know that,
if you stay with it, you’ll be OK.
For me, writing has been always a long process from the inspiration to realization.
Many times I have sat for the better part of a morning, unable to express
what I wanted to say, covered with sweat, staring at a blank computer screen,
and
despairing: “Three hours, I haven’t even written one line. How
am I ever going to write 300 pages?”
Here the lessons about pace imbedded in me from cross country sometimes come
to my rescue. The seemingly overwhelming task of book writing can be accomplished
in the same way as getting into competitive shape. I establish a regular
schedule and try to write at a sustainable pace. A manuscript can be completed
by the
year’s end by disciplining myself to try to average a few hundred words
a day. So I slog on, the distance runner in me knowing that, while I may only
be able to squeeze out a sentence today and a short paragraph tomorrow, if I’m
patient and keep at it, there will be some productive days, too, and eventually
the book will be finished.
3. Learning to gut it out when you are having a very bad day
More than many athletes, distance runners are attuned to their bodies. They
can tell within a beat or two what their heart rate is or estimate within
a few seconds
their time for that last mile. The downside of this exquisite sensitivity
occurs when you are having a very bad day.
High on my list of unpleasant memories of distance running are those occasions
when I knew after the first 100 yards of a long race that it was going to
be one of those days. I couldn’t find a proper running rhythm, my legs felt
heavy, and my pace was way off. My heart rate was too fast, my breathing wasn’t
right, and I already felt tired.
In many other team sports the coach takes you out when you are not playing
well — but
not in cross country. Bad as you feel, and as poorly as you are running,
being a member of the cross-country team requires that you gut it out all
the way to
the finish line. So you plug on, feeling lousy the whole way, disappointing
your coach and sometimes yourself and your teammates as well.
You will have bad days after Lawrence. You might have to make a presentation
to potential clients, give grand rounds at a hospital, or come back to lecture
at your alma mater, things you may have done many times. Inexplicably, at
the moment when you have to perform, you just don’t feel right; the ideas don’t
flow and what you hear yourself saying is way below expectation. The audience
is unimpressed and restless. Despair grows, and you stifle the impulse to
flee.
At these rotten moments, the lessons learned from cross country come in handy.
Runners are practiced at keeping going, putting one foot in front of the
other while feeling lousy, soldiering on to the end. Afterward, you sometimes
find
that, while this was not your best showing, it was good enough — and sometimes “good
enough” is all that’s necessary.
4. Learning that very small differences mean so very much
Harvard doctor/philosopher William James once said that there was little
difference between one person and another, but what little differences there
were, were
very important.
Nowhere are these “little differences” more apparent than in
cross country, where the difference between winning and finishing out of
the money
can be a matter of 30 seconds or so. For spectators standing at the finish
line, that half minute seems to create a huge separation among the competitors,
but
if you do the math, you find that the actual differences are quite small.
The teammate lagging a football field or two behind the victor may have only
run
2-3 percent slower than the first-place finisher.
I once saw a sign outside a Division 1A school’s weight room that said, “Just
a little more effort is the difference between winning and losing.” While
I appreciate the sentiment, it seems to me dead wrong with respect to cross country.
Where small amounts of progress — getting your time down by 2 or 3 percent — require
an enormous commitment of time and effort, no “little more effort” will
do.
These small differences play out in the academic world. Rarely is there only
one scholar/researcher working on a new idea. Typically, several are in the
race to publish first. A lifetime’s reputation can be established by
the one who gets into print a month before a competitor.
Having been on both the winning and losing sides of these publishing races,
I’ve
found that distance running taught me something that has made a difference in
how I react to the results of these competitions. I don’t overestimate
the importance of winning the day, and I try never to underestimate those
who may have finished second. I know the actual differences among us may
be just
a few strides, and there will be other races.
Closing thoughts
Suppose I hadn’t been a distance runner — or any kind of athlete
at all. What would my experience have been like at Lawrence? I probably would
have survived without cross country, because the very hard job of disciplining
myself to be a competent student was eased by encouragement from a number
of Lawrence faculty members.
It’s probable, however, that in my case the requisite intellectual “blossoming” happened
a little sooner than it might have otherwise because some of the lessons from
cross country, drilled into me by Coach A. C. Denny, generalized to academic
work. Also, it’s probably true that distance running kept my spirits up
by providing a setting in which I felt competent while the intellectual maturation
necessary to be a capable student gradually grew within me. Thus, I was ready
for graduate school upon receiving my B.A.— just barely ready, but ready.
Without the tuition from distance running, I don’t think I would have
been as prepared to take that next step.
Douglas Powell, ’56, is a clinical psychologist and the author
of several books, including Profiles of Cognitive Aging and The
Nine Myths of Aging: Maximizing
the Quality of Later Life. He was a Lawrence cross-country team captain
and received the Iden Charles Champion Scholar-Athlete Award. He can be reached
at douglas_powell@hms.harvard.edu.