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Chasing More than Cherry Blossoms
By Brian FieldsMarch/April 2009
For the Washington Running Report
I was eleven years old in 1985 when my father entered the entire family in the Washington, DC Sallie Mae Cherry Blossom Chaser. I had no idea what it was and I don't remember asking. Cherries. Blossoms. It sounded nice, like something I would enjoy, and although the identity of this Sallie Mae remained a mystery I decided to go along.
"It's a ten kilometer road race," Dad later told me, but young and educated outside the metric system, I was unfamiliar with the measurement. He clarified in response to my blank stare. "About six and a half miles."
Still unable to gauge, I went out in the yard to play catch with my friends.
On the April morning of the event Dad woke the family at six. My mother, brother, and I trudged the hallway from bedrooms to bathroom while Dad, awake since four, operated in a contrasting overzealous state, singing and dancing, not only because he had the two hour head start, but because he would soon be smack dab in the midst of his element.
My father had spent much of his life running competitively. High school track in West Virginia, multiple meets over the course of his 20 years in the military, the Honolulu marathon-all of it responsible for his thickly sculpted thighs and calves. My older brother, Bobby, and I, still developing in the mid-eighties, mind you, appeared, though, to have inherited our lower physiques from the maternal side. We were thin and high-waisted, what some referred to as lanky, but we were not balancing on twigs, as Dad used to joke, nor were we at risk of being sued by our own legs for lack of support, as he sometimes teased, nor could a firm breeze actually cut us at the knees-the ribbings, they were endless.
It was a 20-minute drive into DC from our home in southern Maryland and Dad woke us again when we arrived. "Up and at ‘em! Cherry blossoms!" I opened my eyes to a pink blur outside the car window.
West Potomac Park, situated between the National Mall and the Potomac River, was the site of the race. Streets and paths were lined with thousands of blooming Japanese cherry trees, their blur decipherable once Dad found a spot and parked the car.
We crossed a large field where a crowd was mustering and it was there we discovered the registration table. As volunteers helped fasten numbers to our t-shirts, my brother and I stood speechless, intimidated by the hundreds of other runners stretching and readying themselves for a race covering a distance I still didn't understand.
We pretended to stretch; then Dad led us into the middle of the crowd which had shifted from the grass into the street. Why we were all standing atop one another when there was an expansive park off to the side I didn't know until all grew quiet and a single, inaudible voice mentioned something before a pistol fired and the throng began to move. With no one announcing any type of coordinated left-right-left cadence via bullhorn, mayhem ensued as runners battled for better position and we spent the next few minutes fending off the hips and elbows of complete strangers.
Having started in an extremely tight pack of our own, our family was quickly divided by runners weaving in between, leaving me with Dad while my brother and mother vanished altogether. I turned my head a few times in an effort to find them, but saw only a blend of a hundred faces, nothing recognizable. Accepting they were gone, perhaps forever, I locked in on my father, who, unaware that our numbers had been cut in half, continued on at a frenzied pace.The course was flat and followed the road, passing beneath the blossoms Dad had pointed out on arrival. A few monuments and landmarks could be seen from the street, but I had little time for sightseeing since one glance at the Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial and my father could have slipped away into the horde. So I continued after him, desperation my only motivation, but even that wasn't enough.
Dad lost me with a mile and a half to go, but when I crossed the finish line at the 53-minute mark he was there, in the midst of his cooldown routine, shocked to see me. "Amazing!" he yelled. "I didn't realize you were that close behind me!"
I smiled back, unable to speak, and then doubled over to battle the wheezing.
My mother and brother weren't seen for some time. Mom later told us she stopped often to walk, enjoying the scenery and temperate weather. My brother claimed he maintained a decent pace until he felt, as he put it, an "urge."
Dad laughed.
"I left the course," Bobby explained, "and found a port-a-john, but there was a line and some other guy off to the side who didn't make it."
Dad's smile quickly faded and together we all cringed.
After our family's reunion at the finish line, my brother and I limped back to the car with our mother while Dad stayed behind to relish in the atmosphere a while longer. With the windows down to catch the breeze off the Potomac, we could hear the speaker system, a man reading off numbers and random people cheering, but it blended in with the birds chirping and passing cars the same way sounds merge together right before sleep.
Some time later the opening of the car door and the jingling of car keys obliterated this relative peace. Dad sat down behind the wheel and sighed loudly before speaking. "Well, they were giving away prizes." He shook his head, disappointed that his family was eager to leave something that, to him, provided so much nostalgia.
"Did you win, honey?" Mom asked, reclined in the passenger seat, her eyes still closed.
"I did and you could have, too."
"We could have?" she said without energy.
"Yeah," he said, "they were calling out numbers."
"What numbers?" Bobby asked, relieving Mom of her obligatory line of questioning.
"Our racing numbers. Any numbers starting with three were given ankle weights." He then threw what appeared to be two balled-up socks wrapped in plastic into the backseat between Bobby and me, but when the package hit it bounced with a vigor reserved for a much heavier object. "You had to be there to pick it up," Dad said, still shaking his head. "They wouldn't let me take all four."
Bobby and I just stared at our father's reward as it continued to bounce.
Much has changed in 23 years.
I now understand that Sallie Mae is a student loan company, one of the nation's largest, but due to poor credit markets it no longer sponsors the Cherry Blossom Chaser.
I also understand my father's intentions waking us so early on that April morning for a road race we didn't see coming. My first child is about to be born next month and I am very aware of the television, the computer, the video games, and all else that contributes to the sedentary lifestyle most children in this country lead. Pile on this the fact there is one less ten kilometer race to run and I imagine Sallie Mae is now providing financial assistance to kids a little heavier than before.
My father, now in his mid-sixties, runs no longer, but has instead adopted my mother's racing strategy from decades earlier. Together they enjoy early morning walks and as much as he would like to imagine the street lined with screaming fans, somehow neighbors in their underwear scurrying out in the driveway to grab the paper just isn't the same.
Brian Fields lives and runs in Los Angeles, where he works as a novelist and screenwriter.
(Editor's Note: The Sallie Mae 10K was known as the Sallie Mae Cherry Blossom Chaser until 1992. It was always run the week after the Cherry Blossom Ten-Mile, and the idea was that the elite national and international runners who came to town for the Cherry Blossom would stay and run the Cherry Blossom Chaser the week after. The race added prize money in 1989. The Sallie Mae 10K was last held in 2007.)