Work Text:
Eight lanes, four hundred meters.
My fingers thrum against my thigh as I still at the edge of the crowd. Around me are braided heads, unwilted figures that stand broad shouldered, legs that would measure only my entire torso, and ahead of me is the first head of the four hundred.
Power, pace, push, pray to God—I repeat the layout I have run so many times before to myself but I fail and flinch at the starting gunshot. I watch as they take to the first curve: legs cycling in a perfect pinwheel rotation. The line they ran in now broke at the straightaway and by the second bend, they accelerated again and entered the last straight with every step as a fight to maintain speed.
An officiate calls my bib number and I find my legs move as my mind screams. It wails louder: "God, please let me run faster"—I bend down to adjust the foot pedals, my mind pleads for synchrony with my body—"I want to stay, I still want to run"—one foot in front of the other—"please let me fly"—I lower myself and try once more with conviction: "goddamnit, trust yourself."
I dread beginnings the most. It has never been my strength: I freeze up at first day introductions, hesitate to raise my hand in class, and doubt the words already in my mouth. It is the dead stillness behind the blocks, the tenseness right before the gun start. Starts hold the weight of dictating the end of a race—if I don't start right, it won't end well.
To me, I fear the start knowing every thought and nerve is aflame. To coach, my starts are too jumpy. He tells me again and again that a good start is 'para kang madadapa'—like you're tripping—to fly, you first can't be afraid to fall.
The flight I refer to is the "float". It is a fleeting moment when legs generate horizontal and vertical force to propel forward. The faster the turnover, the better the illusion. These few moments I only achieve a glimpse of. I wait for the day that the sky mirrors the ground and stretches those seconds.
Being able to fly means to risk and still fall. In a sense, training is falling again and again. I work quietly, twice in a day and thirty-five hours a week, in a constant push for a good time throughout every training cycle. Hours upon hours of defeat—bruises and scratches, callouses roughen my hands, soreness in my limbs, blisters on my feet—are all condensed to barely a minute.
It's easy to assure yourself when the months of training are arranged into a neat excel sheet—tracking all the increased weights and decreased times—but in the midst of it, I am only pushing a wall that leaves effort invisible.
The struggle furthered when I realised that time is infinite but the portion given to me is finite, and even shorter is my time as an athlete. Not only do I fear beginning, but I hate it all the more given that it points to an inevitable ending.
My coach tells me: 'kung alam mo na matatalo ka na, edi pahirapan mo ng konti'—if you know you'll lose, then have them struggle a little more. For every run—every warm-up lap, sprint and time trial—I run twice the race against time. I savour every moment of exhaustion and the freedom of wind in my ears as though I will lose it by tomorrow. This desperation gave me the drive that matched the volume of my own fear, enough that I have no other choice but to trust the fall.
Fearing the start never dissipates. Yet its absence isn't absolute triumph or an assurance for a flawless performance. The presence of fear at the starting line is proof that it matters the most. I know now that being exhausted by something I love is a privilege.
Eight lanes, four hundred meters.
I choose to run it again and again, even without the guarantee for a medal—until I bleed blue. From one breath to the next, the world turns upside down as time suspends me before my flight. I face the rubber floor of the oval, my heartbeat is in my throat, and the world slows to a stillness.
I am terrifyingly alive.