Bell Lap

I hate running, but as a kid I was pretty good at it. I wasn’t a natural runner. I developed into a distance runner because of my tendency to talk too much. In the fourth and fifth grade we went to an Adventist school in Anchorage. It was a small school and we had our classes combined with other levels. My classroom was a fourth, fifth and sixth grade class with Mrs. Kreiglestein. She was the wife of the principal. I think she was in her early 30s or even late 20s and so was her husband. She was a good teacher. We got along pretty well. I know that she came to my defense in issues with her husband. She handled the discipline in her classroom; I remember many of the punishments that she gave me.

Thinking back about her and now being a teacher myself, I feel sorry for her. She had three levels of students she had to instruct and she did a fine job, but it was a losing battle. At the beginning of each term she would give the students a list of all of the assignments for the quarter. With the work outlined in front of me, I would quickly knock out the math work and then complete anything else that was assigned and shift my attention to other things around the classroom. She had stations around the room. There was a tape deck with huge headphones to listen to “Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue” stories. There were other activities around the room that were academic and focused on reading, but the room was limited in its offerings. So, I would bring matchbox cars and other things to keep me busy during the long hours of school when I would run out of things to do.

That is how I became aware of her discipline practices, and how I grew into a decent distance runner. Mrs. Kreiglestein was fair. She would give warnings. If I was caught or told not to do something, she would write my name on the board. That was the warning. Additional infractions would earn check marks next to my name. The punishments would kick in at the third or fourth check. The base level punishment started out at five laps around the school building before lunch. The school wasn’t too big; it was probably just a little larger than a gym with a single basketball court, so maybe it was 200 yards around it. Five laps would have been just over a half of a mile. You could always progress beyond the five laps though. Like I said, that was just the base model. The laps you could accumulate were almost unlimited.

I don’t remember a lot of kids running laps with me. There would be a couple running their five laps, but I usually didn’t stop with the base model. I would have 15 or 20 laps to run before I could eat lunch. I got to the point that I would just pack my lunch in my coat pockets and eat while I ran around the school. One of my good friends back then, an honest blond kid named Ronnie, who had the goal of reading the Bible before we got into the fifth grade. He would count my laps. He would sit on the back fire escape in his coat and tally my laps as I went by. I discovered that the laps could continue well past the lunchtime as well. One day I remember still running laps as cars came to pick up the kids at the end of the day. I think I had sixty-something laps that day. There were only a couple of days that I had that many laps.

My fifth grade year we had a mile run. Mrs. Kreiglestein released us in groups of two in one minute intervals. This made sense to me, because that is how they would start sled-dog races during the Fur Rendezvous, the World Championship Dog Sled Races in Anchorage. You didn’t want a bunch of kids or dogs running in one large pack, you would want to spread them out. The kid I ran with that day was Danny. He was in the sixth grade and a good runner. He and I determined to run the entire mile non-stop. We took off running. We didn’t have a track. Our track went around the block that the school was on. It was a huge block; I remember it totaling a mile in circumfrence, although I don’t know who clocked it in their car, probably Mr. Kreiglestein. Danny and I were released midway through the run. Some older kids were set loose before us and had a good couple of minute head start. Danny and I caught them spread out along the way and passed them.

Some of the girls we passed expressed concern that we were running nonstop. It was the winter and we were running on the packed snow next to the road. About halfway through, I lost Danny. He dropped out. There were fewer and fewer kids ahead of me. Finally, as I rounded the last corner, I came up behind Andre Nadei. Andre was a redheaded kid from South Africa. He was the best athlete in the school, a seventh grader and he later married the ninth grade teacher from that same school. That kid had the moves. I saw him and began my sprint. Andre, he was also very proud and competitive, wouldn’t let me pass him. He was the first kid back to the school and I was the second, but my time was much better than his.

When I was in the seventh grade, I went to a public school. There we had a track team and one of the mothers was our track coach. I remember that she complimented me on my running motion once. She said that my running motion was “very relaxed, without a lot of wasted motion.” She was the only track coach that I ever had. My event was the mile. I wasn’t good then, I never was real good just decent. I didn’t know how to race; I only knew how to run. The only advice she gave me was run and when you hear the bell, that is the last lap, run faster.

That advice served me well, when my former Green Beret Uncle, infamous for his challenges against the children of my generation, challenged me to a mile race during a family reunion one summer. He was in his late 30s and like Andre very proud and competitive. He heard that I could run, so we all went to the track in Kirkland and ran a race as a family. Everyone ran a little, but the real competition was between a twelve year old kid and a former Special Forces soldier.

I ran. My uncle kept on my heels. My cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles ran sat and watched. For three and a half laps we ran, when we rounded the final corner, I ran faster. My lanky legs spirited my lean frame. I could hear the heavy proud footsteps behind me. All I did was run faster.

I have won and lost many races. That is one in the ‘win’ column. The best race I ran ended up in the loss column. The final year of high school, I finally realized how to run a mile. A mile is a sprint. In all of the miles I had run before I would run, but I wasn’t focused on speed. I focused on endurance. A mile is a stretched out sprint. You don’t wait for the bell lap. You start running fast at the starter’s pistol. The bell lap just increases your speed a bit, but that is all. In high school we ran a meet at Walla Walla College as a part of Academy Days. Visiting academies participated against each other. Since Auburn didn’t support competition, it was the only meet I would ever run in during high school. This also meant that we didn’t have a coach or direction of how to improve times or workouts. Everything we did was on our own. That race, I ran against this guy from Upper Columbia Academy. I lead the entire way. In the bell lap, his sprint was just a little bit better. He edged me out by just a couple of seconds, but I had run the mile in 4:35 seconds. I was happy, but I hate running.

Japan has been a lot like how I would run races as a kid. I would start the race and just go. I wouldn’t focus on speed. I would focus on endurance. In the last few months here, I have felt myself loose interest in some of the things here. I am too familiar with the city and the routines. I have been around the track for the last eleven months. How many times can I be excited about a shopping street? How many times can I see something new at a festival? I have had other things on my mind. There are projects at home that I want to attack. That has always been one of my traits. I live my life a month in advance of where I am. I don’t change direction quickly. I begin a race and I run it. I have run three laps and now it is the bell lap. The end is near. My adrenaline has kicked in. I can see time passing quickly. I am now beginning to think about the things I do everyday and the things that I will miss when I return home. I am also wondering how the experiences over the last year will affect my life back home. I am starting to think about the transition I will have moving back to the states. Chrissy says that I will have culture shock when I return. I know there will be a transition time. I have really grown used to life here. In many ways I have grown too familiar. It is near time for us to move home. It is also time to take some stock in the past year as well.