The Secret Life of NARPS

Although we pushed ourselves to adopt the “early-riser” mentality that other active students all share, our attempt to cut the ties to our beds in the mornings failed. We may not have made the cut for this exclusive group of kids who wake with the sun, but we have decided to make our own clique: the night runners. If we can’t get up early, then let’s stay up late.

Due to the fact that Izzy is nocturnal, she has been anxiously awaiting to start her routine of night running since the day spring was supposed to start. Monday’s optimal weather provided us with the first chance to run after sunset.

What are the advantages of night running? From being able to embrace your ostrich run without the fear of fellow students seeing you, to saving yourself the humiliation of having your professors outrun you, the pros are endless. When midnight struck, Maddie and Izzy let their inner ostriches run free. After passing a romantic couple on the swings outside of Twilight, we were enveloped in our own solidarity. Everything was going smoothly; Maddie had actually remembered to use her inhaler and was able to breath without sounding like a 60-year-old nicotine addict, and Izzy had just watched the newest episode of “Online Dating Rituals of the American Male” and was therefore running on a trash-TV high. All was well … until the townies started appearing. To all of you female runners out there, we are sure you have experienced a car full of townie teenage boys rolling down their windows and shouting inaudible, yet clearly inappropriate, words at your sweaty selves on a run. Well, when the sporadic streetlights are the only sources of illumination, and you seem to be the only people for miles, these audible shouts become more alarming than flattering. Especially when there are multiple cars doing this. Together. In a caravan formation.

Long story short, we quickened our pace, ran to Izzy’s house in search of shelter, and begged her mother to drive us back to campus. Safely back in Battell, Izzy started browsing the internet for headlamps while Maddie looked into obtaining a concealed carry license.

Thanks to Mother Nature, our next day’s training was derailed. But not to fear: we elicited help from everyone’s second favorite personal trainer (behind Goran “Bob Harper” Simic), Shaun T. For those of you who haven’t experienced this workout god, Shaun T. is a six-foot-tall and roughly 200 pound nugget of muscle that stars in the Insanity workout videos. Playing eenie meenie miney mo to settle on the “Pure Cardio: Day 7” video, we pressed play, locked the Battell common room door, and exchanged nervous glances. What followed was a combination of wheezing, grunting, whining, fist-pumping, jump-jacking, push-uping, butt kicking, squatting and hopping. All of this while Shaun T. yelled any combination of the following phrases: “Dig deeper!” and “Soft knees, soft knees!”, “Shaun T. is starting to sweat everybody!” And, our personal favorite, “I’m so tired I don’t know the names of my moves!” Regardless, the yelling worked, and although some of our push-ups looked more like the Vine sensation “Grind On Me” dance move, we completed all forty minutes of the video without stopping. One of the first fully successful workouts we have had in a long time (longer than we have been waiting for Spring).

Last week’s training brought us to an interesting conclusion: we are far more successful runners when we have creepers harassing us or Shaun T. yelling at us. In other words, when we have people to motivate us we accomplish more than we thought we could. This proves difficult for us when we are completely isolated on the unpaved Sheep Farm Road and about to start up a big hill. Too many more times than we’d like to admit, we have stopped for a walking break instead of pushing ourselves to go farther. Frankly, we’ve tried a lot of tactics to improve our mental endurance: self pep-talks, counting games, meditation, visualization, folk music, no music and pop music. Some of these methods provided more success than others, but we know that the race-day adrenaline and the presence of other runners will help motivate us to keep going.