R and J in the USA

After our Skokie race, we both took some time to chill out before the awards ceremony that would announce us both taking home a few age-group medals. It’s always fun to get on the podium, no matter how big or small the race is and no matter how little consequence it has on anything else in the world around us.

The most memorable thing about the Skokie race for Julie, however, was not a medal, nor hitting the negative splits she had been aiming for. For better or worse, the most memorable part was after the race when she was sitting down in the grass resting. About five feet away was a girl who looked to be about 12 (the race results reveal she was 13). She was sitting down while a gentleman who looked to be in his mid-30s to mid-40s was standing in front of her. She was staring off into the distance as he was making quite clear that he did not approve of her race performance. Unclear whether he was her father, her coach or someone else, but whoever he was, he clearly was taking the business of letting her know his disappointment in her very seriously, and fairly pubicly.

“You were running 6:20’s in the first 2 miles. I just don’t understand why you couldn’t do it in the last mile.” He said with an exasperated tone.

”I tried.” She pleaded

”Well, you need to try harder.”

Julie, who always tries not to judge and also not to butt her nose into other people’s business, found it hard not to notice this particularly indiscreet display of, well, in an attempt not to judge, she will refrain from publicly naming what she thought it was a display of. That would have been enough, but the guy just would not let up. Julie, who loves constructive criticism and tough love, and finds great fun in an honest assessment of when she can do better and the encouragement to pursue it, found this particular person’s behavior to lack all of those things and to just sound like a grown-ass adult whining. That, in itself would have been none too pleasant, but forgivable (Julie is VERY good at whining). But this guy was doing all of his whining about and directly in the face of this young girl, covered in sweat and unappreciated effort. It seemed not only to be a fairly sucky way to motivate any human being, let alone a 13 year old girl who clearly has some running talent, but to be just plain silly behavior. “I just can’t understand why…” “How come you don’t…”

And it went on and on and on. Julie was thinking, “Ugh, dude! Deal with it! Which one of you is the 13 year old here?” Julie kept trying to look away, but she felt like doing so would somehow be condoning this beratement. Also, they were right in the middle of the milling crowd, and he was not being particularly quiet about his total and complete astonishment and disappointment.

At some point, Julie caught the girl’s eye while the guy was busy looking off in the distance and carrying on with his apparent utter disbelief that she only ran a 24:50 race. Which, by the way, is a decent time for anyone to run, let alone a 13 year old girl, even if she was fundamentally capable to run faster. Whatever extra minutes she had lost on the race course, he was happily matching and then some with a litany of unhelpful complaints that would have constituted a handful of yellow cards if a maturity referee was anywhere nearby. Even after Julie was there almost a full five minutes, he was still carrying on with nothing new to say, just constant exasperation. And when she got out of the porta-potty a few minutes later, the same scene appeared to be carrying on in the distance.

By the way, this girl came in 1st in her age group by a full 4 minutes, and was the 6th female overall and 39th out of 280 racers of every age. Anyways, when Julie caught the young girl’s eye, she mouthed. “You did great.” Not because she is interested in telling someone they did great just to say they did great, but this girl legitimately ran great. Maybe not compared to what she is capable of, and Julie knows nothing about that, but compared to the rest of us mortals. To clock in 2 miles at a 6 something pace is great, and to run a sub 25 5K is something Julie is still working her ass off to achieve. And this girl was only getting a garbage pile of whiny complaints spewed at her for waaaay tooooo long for any human to be behaving like this.

If there had been another adult there, Julie was thinking, she would imagine at some point they would have said to him, “Dude, I think she’s got the point, let’s move on.” Maybe Julie has the same disease, since the point has been made and she is STILL complaining. Julie was tempted to be that other adult, but already felt she was crossing the line too much just staying tuned in to it this long.  She was thinking, “I could understand this level of irrational complaining coming from someone trying to cancel their phone or internet and having been transferred to the 4th representative, but come on guy!”

The best part was yet to come. In response to what Julie mouthed to the girl while trying to be at least one representative of reality, “You did great,” the girl didn’t smile, blush, cry, look away or even mouth back, “Thanks.” This young little badass mouthed back with all the confidence in the world, “I know.” 

Oh, this girl’s gonna be just fine, Julie thought. She’s gonna be juuuust fine. As for the whining full grown adult berating her in public, hopefully he’ll be able to get over it soon enough.  

Circling back to our 5K race results and the respite of how mature adults behave…that’s Ryan 9 – Julie 7.