Joy on the Track
Tracksmith's Twilight meets are great for the sport and America.
When you live one block from a track, the competition is right in your ears.
That’s been the case ever since my wife and I moved to an apartment complex across from a community college. Whenever there’s a track meet, every few minutes the starting gun snaps its report and my body twitches in Pavlovian response, nerve endings conditioned to fire after two decades of two-command starts.
So as the races started for last week’s Tracksmith Twilight 5000 at nearby Laney College, the sound of the starting gun through the open window got my dander up.
Held in beautiful, downtown Oakland, California, the community meet was the second of Tracksmith’s summer track events in the Bay Area. Heats started in the early evening and ran into the night.
I was in a muddled headspace as I warmed up along the infield with friends.
Our daughter was born a month ago and we’re still in the early throes of first-time parenthood. Only through my wife’s patience, extended family support, and the race venue being a literal block from our apartment could I participate.
But, how wonderful that I could.
It was perhaps my slowest 5K on a track. Indeed, I chuckle-grimaced as I saw the clock with a lap to go, realizing the Me from 18 years ago would have already finished. Still, it was the most fun I’ve had on a track in a long while.
I’m slower now, but I know my body better. Moreover, I’ve eaten enough humble pie since my 20s to avoid egoist mistakes in the early laps. Out I went, midpack from the start and well within myself. And lo, sleep deprivation be damned, I floated up through the field until the final mile when I accelerated to the finish. I didn’t have much fitness to draw on, but the muscle memory was still there even if the actual ability was not.
“What a joyful event,” my father concluded the next day, as he juggled our daughter on his lap. “The atmosphere was casual, supportive, and well-meaning.” And he was right. A good track meet is indeed a joy.
I’d forgotten its beautiful simplicity—the competitive camaraderie of folks leaning forward together, shoulder-to-shoulder along a waterfall starting line. It had been too long since I’d felt the vibe of a support as everyone joins together with the goal to see how fast we can move on a given day. Kudos to Tracksmith for organizing and hosting these track meets.1
We need more of these events and spaces.
A recent study from Maxim Massenkoff of the Naval Postgraduate School and Nathan Wilmers of the MIT Sloan School of Management reiterated what we’ve long known: that people of different socio-economic classes are increasingly isolated, only interacting with other people of their social circle. But they added a new contribution, derived from geo-location device data. They found a small set of places where people still interact across class lines: the restaurant chains of Applebees and Olive Garden.
These causal eateries “have the largest impact on cross-class encounters,” Massenkoff and Wilmers concluded. As Catherine Rempell writes in the Washington Post, “Everyone, rich and poor, seems to like predictable, mass-produced, moderate-price-point nachos.”
I love endless breadsticks as much as anyone, but this is a disturbing state affairs. We’ve insulated ourselves from many of those with whom we must share in the project of social and political life. This is bad for a community, bad for the soul, and bad for the nation. It’s within this bleached social environment that we’ve become so mistrustful, paranoid, and politically polarized, filled with tribal loathing and the empty politics of culture war.
Perhaps events like the Twilight Meets could help, in small ways, to reknit our sheared social fabric. In an age where sociability has been eroded by workaholism, neoliberalism, social media, and streaming television, creating venues for low-stakes competition could draw in a broader range of athletes. Much like the bowling leagues of yesteryear that brought people together across class lines, an inclusive track meet might play a similar role.
The Tracksmith meets certainly provide a blueprint to revitalize older leagues like the venerable Pacific Association of the USATF here in the Bay Area. The existing race circuit for track and cross country is structured to mimic prep and collegiate competition. The fields are small, fast, and upwardly mobile. That’s not going to appeal to anyone beyond the alumni of that style of racing.
A better model is the work of Ben Pochee, architect of the Night of the 10K PBs in London. The event organizer realized that community and performance go hand-in-hand:
“So right from day one we wanted a crowd. We probably only had 50-100 people in 2013 but we got them in lane four. So it’s all about how can we improve atmosphere and engagement but working within the rules. Then you realise there is no rule saying you can’t have spectators on the track. That’s just one example – so if you talk to people and get them behind you it’s all possible.”
Pochee’s formula: create a track meet with heats of community races building up to a championship race. Keep the beer flowing with a festive energy spilling into the outside lanes. Get bodies on the track, no matter their abilities, and you’ll connect people with the top of the sport and each other.
Look, I get you can’t solve the world’s problems with a footrace. But nor can you can’t fix our political problems with AI or a new phone app. It will take the hard work of bringing people together on common ground to chat through their differences and disagreements. The tarmac of a running track isn’t a bad place to start.
Thanks for reading.
Here are a few more pics of the Twilight 5Ks from Miya Hirabayashi:
Check out Miya’s photography on Instagram.
Weekly run
Breakfast Club meets every Thursday for an 8-mile run:
When and Where: 6:30am at Lake Temescal in Oakland, CA
Pace: ~7:00 to 7:40 pace with a few hundred feet of climbing
For updates about the run, email Katie Klymko at katieklymko at gmail.com to join Breakfast Club’s WhatsApp chat. More info on Strava
Parting thought
“The cars are all in a bunch, circuit after circuit, an American mantra. Repetition is holy. The void receives their fury. Carry me to heaven on a helix of NASCAR noise. Here we’re all tuned to the same vibration. Every 30 seconds or so, as the cars pass, it baptizes you like a power chord. Your whole body sings with it.”
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading. You can follow me on Strava, Notes, and what’s left of Twitter.
Tracksmith didn’t pay me to write this. I just had a great time.
Those are gorgeous photos! Congrats on your post-baby race. I think once you fully recover sleep-wise and discover a new normal with an infant/toddler, your running will be as fast or faster than before. As for meetups—does LMJS still do its Fourth Sunday race at the lake? I always found that to be a great low-stakes drop-in of a race for a solid speed session. As for that study—I find it hard to believe that people cross class lines and mingle at Applebees and Olive Gardens. Those restaurants are located in suburban sprawl locales where the very poor and very wealthy tend not to frequent. I was trying to think what was the last place I interacted with many different types of people in terms of class, politics, and even race (though still predominantly white), and it was our county rodeo. It brought together almost every type of person in our county, which is very purple politically and very split in terms of income, and it was neat to see the mix and interactions.
Joy through movement ❤️