College, a race for the ages

This summer I got a call from my friend asking me to run with her in the New Jersey State Triathlon.  At first I hesitated because I had never considered watching a triathlon much less competing in one. Needless to say, for the sake of the column, I agreed and began training.  

However, as the weeks went by and my endurance improved and pace quickened, I found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to finish the runs.  This haunted me until the day of the race when I came to the unfortunate truth that I was running without a purpose.

The morning of the race came, and at 5 a.m. in the 110-degree humidity, thousands flocked to Mercer County Park to compete in the day's events.  Thousands more joined the athletes with signs in hand, set to endure the unforgiving weather because they recognized that their racer had a purpose.

Some were there to fulfill a promise to themselves, such as to lose weight.  Others wanted to scratch something else off of their bucket lists, while many simply wondered if they could do it. Among the athletes were middle-aged, ex-Division I track stars attempting to relive their glory years, moms who wanted to step outside of their offices and dads who just wanted to blow off some steam.  

A partially blind athlete defied the odds by relying strictly on his sense of hearing to navigate the course. 

The entire crowd was humbled when a father and his disabled son were able to live out their dreams the moment they crossed the finish line together. And then there was me, a typical 21-year-old without a clue.  

Now that I am a senior at Villanova I reflect back to that conflict on the day of the race in mid-July and wonder, four years later, what has been my purpose?  What am I running for?  This is the sentiment shared by all college seniors, of course to the chagrin of our now poorer parents.  

As we enter the final lap of our abnormally long, proverbial college mile, we will look back to the beginning.  We will try to recall the day we started, unaware that we were even in a race.  Launched into the turbulent tornado of Orientation we didn't get a last swig of water or even a chance to stretch.  And within a second we were off, all of us running swiftly as if we knew where we were going.  

Eventually we found our lane, or our niche, where we finally felt comfortable.  At times the lane appeared straight as an arrow, but at others it was as crooked as Roger Clemens' testimony.  

Through the twists and turns we found ourselves praying for the opportunity to pass the baton off to someone else.  We regret not training harder, eating that extra piece of free pizza or not listening to our parents.  

But then you survive freshman year and are glad that the first mile was the hardest and look toward the future. Will this race become physical?  Will it be a dogfight to pull ahead? And in the grand scheme of things, what does "ahead" even mean?

Sophomore year we sprinted through Main Campus with the illusion that we knew what we were doing, but we definitely didn't.  

While the first mile is always the hardest, the stretch that follows tests your endurance the most. Could you handle all of the responsibility and pressure that this highly trafficked racetrack hurled your way?  

This is when strategy came into play. Whom would you associate with? What clubs would you participate in? And the inescapable, horrid question, what are you going to do when you grow up?  

Junior year came, and we were faced with all types of reality.  Many of us are exposed to many of the injustices that come with being grown up.  It makes us realize that unlike the New Jersey State Triathlon, the race that we are running might not be a fair contest. 

We grappled with imponderable questions. If we were in the Daytona 500 would we be the car or the driver?  In other words, after all of this, are we in control of our own destiny?  Three years later, three years wiser, we're not any closer to discovering why we're running.