There is a glisten to Marc-Daniel Julien’s forehead. Marc’s coaches claim that this glisten is necessary before running any race, whether a sprint or a two mile. He wears a gray sweatshirt with the block letters “Niles West Track and Field” and the iconic wolf logo stitched on, with the word “Captain” and “Julien” sewn onto the left sleeve and back, respectively.
He has just finished running a mile as part of his warm-up for his upcoming race, the 800. Following the crack of the gun, which marks the beginning of the last heat of the 4 x 2, a middle-aged announcer comes over the intercom at GBS High School’s track. “FIRST CALL 800-METER RUN. FIRST CALL 800 METER RUN.” Marc briskly jogs to starting line to check in for his race, and then begins doing “dynamics” on the football field, which include stretches such as high knees, butt kicks, and cariocas.
Following the dynamics, it’s off to stationary stretching. The glisten has intensified. “SECOND CALL 800-METER RUN. SECOND CALL 800-METER RUN.” Marc, using the end zone line as a starting point, starts jogging, but soon quickens his pace to a run, and finally a sprint, until he reaches the 60-yard line, where he slows to a stop. These are known throughout the running world as strides, and are said to mimic the end of a race.
According to Marc, warming up is crucial to having success in a race, saying, “Your warm up will make or break your race. The more you put into it the more you get out of it.”
He is able to get three more strides in before the broadcaster invades his thoughts again. “LAST CALL 800 -METER RUN. LAST CALL 800 METER RUN.”
Marc, knowing to stay close to the finish line at all times during the second call phase, is one of the first to congregate around the IHSA official. Soon enough, it’s off with his gray sweatshirt and onto the fifth lane of the track. The official wanders to lane one, raises his right arm and–CRACK!
Like most athletes in early bird Strength and Conditioning, Marc wakes up at 5:45 every morning in order to avoid bearing the wrath of 50 push-ups for tardiness. As Marc has yet to earn his drivers license, he chooses to ride his bike from his Skokie apartment every morning, rain, shine, or snow. Yesterday, Marc completed a lower body lifting workout, so he expects a vigorous, tiresome upper body workout (feared by any and all long-distance runners), but is pleasantly surprised when he learns that his class will be playing Ultimate Frisbee today. So much for the pre-meet workout.
Marc eats his breakfast in the locker room after losing two Ultimate games, his first food of the day, which also happens to be the last food he had yesterday: Corner Bakery’s Chicken Carbonara (named for the 70 grams of carbs per serving?). The Niles West Long Distance Track and Cross Country teams have many traditions, one of which is eating at Corner Bakery the night before a meet; however, Marc feels that his leftover chicken and pasta, alone, won’t cut it for his calorie-burning lifestyle, so he resolves to buy a bagel at the cafeteria.
Next, it’s off to Marc’s first-period class, physics with Ms. Lietz, where he takes a seat in the back. It’s a typical science room: long with several black lab tables, but the front of the room is also dotted with numerous bumper stickers, with a few reading “Black Holes are where God Divided by Zero” or “Alcohol and calculus don’t mix. Never drink and derive,” in addition to a counter-clockwise clock (there’s an eagerly watched clockwise one, too). Since more than half the class is absent (to take the AP US History test), the first part of the period has been dedicated to watching clips from The Big Bang Theory on YouTube. For the second half of the period, Marc, instead of working on a lab write-up like most of his classmates, plays a video game that he made in his Video Game Programming and Design class. The hero of the game is a small red rectangle, seeking to defend himself against large blue squares who wish nothing but his demise. Juniors Alvin Lee and Michael Marrougi watch in fascination as David conquers Goliath time and time again.
Shortly thereafter, the bell rings to mark the beginning of his AP Chem class. Once again, Marc finds himself in a class where nothing is going on, in a double no less! However, the always resourceful Mr. Heinz, his class already having took the AP test and the final exam, finds something fun for his students to do, that is, surprisingly, not playing the online game “Sporkle” the whole double (he saved that for the second period). Marc and his classmates take a survey about their future, telling what they want to be, what their dream job is, and what steps they plan on taking to fulfill it.
Being a junior, the topic of his future has been on his mind for quite some time. “I plan to major in computer science, in addition to running in college, whether it be at the club level or competing for an official school team,” he says.
After a few games of Sporkle during the second period of the double, it’s off to Homeroom in the autos room. Here, upon receiving a locker partner form, Marc shamelessly borrows my pencil, saying that he “must lose five a day.”
Marc has lunch fourth period, but he hardly goes to the cafeteria, opting to instead tutor at the Lit Center or go to Junior Cabinet, where Nick Goldwyn frequently compares him to a picture of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. After an uneventful, sparsely populated fifth period French class, he moves on to his sixth period Math Analysis class with Ms. Rauser.
In the class, Ms. Rauser gives the class several Rotation of Conics problems, filled to the brim with a plethora of variables, fractions, cosigns, and parentheses, which all amounted to a critical error in my Geometry 12 mind. Instead of staring in bewilderment at the numerous optical illusions painted on the walls like most of the class (actually, it was probably only me), Marc promptly solves the entirety of the problem. During the course of the class, sophomore Michelle Kim offers him a Hershey’s Almond Kiss, which he politely declines due to his meet after school; however, Ms. Rauser jokingly threatens insubordination unless she is given one. After the bell rings, Marc takes a picture of a homework problem written on the whiteboard, because he isn’t too lazy to run twice a day, but when it comes to copying down problems, oh boy. In the halls, Marc runs into fellow runner, senior Vishal Piryani, who states that Rotation of Conics is “completely impractical.”
Marc’s 7th period class, Video Game Programming and Design, where he made his infamous cube game. Senior Chris Sorenson, who Marc sits next to in the class, speaks highly of Marc: “He shows up everyone in the class, I mean, he made that cube game in a weekend.” Computer nerds are strewn throughout Marc’s family, too; his runs his own search engine site.
Similar to his AP Chem class, Sporkle dominates the day’s curriculum, as the computers have mysteriously stopped working for the day, where the class failed to guess two Super Smash Bros. characters, Zero Suit Samus and R.O.B., and Gum, in the category of three-letter body parts (who doesn’t perpetually use this word in the plural?).
In English, Marc tuned out an unexpected political debate, thinking about his race later in the day. “You’re always gonna have pre-race jitters, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The best thing you can do is to envision yourself doing good, all while utilizing and perfecting your strategy.” However, like the good student athlete he is, he took place in a pertinent conversation on J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.
The butterflies in his stomach increased twofold as his last class, U.S. History, began. Like the rest of his classmates, he politely sat through a movie and then took notes on the 60s, but not even trying to contain his nerves. At 3:23, his brain his wracked to the point where he doesn’t hear the bell, but rather leaves when he notices everyone else exiting the class. He moves like a ghost, albeit a quick one, to his locker to retrieve some books he’ll need for this Sunday; yes, even Marc refuses to do any homework on a Friday or Saturday, and scurries to the varsity locker room to don the red and white.
***
Sticking to his strategy, Marc gets out to a fast-paced start, matching the leading pack’s speed stride for stride. As he approaches the first straightaway, he stares down the opponent in front of him, a lean, fit, and built New Trier half-miler. Marc’s fierce, brown eyes pierce into the shoulder blades of his blue and green foe. He memorizes everything about them. The two thin, pasty white stumps move far out from their normal position to punch their followers in the face and fling their own “glisten” into their chests. Under a cloudless Glenview sky, Marc is battling in the rain. He feels a bullet penetrate his right calf, but he hardly notices, still ingraining the two thin stumps into his brain. The cut on his leg from a spike is merely an annoyance, nothing painful. As the stumps go faster, Marc follows suit, his eyes unwavering in their mission to burn straight through the Trevian’s back.
Before Marc realizes it, his enemy has led him to the front of the leading pack. Mike Grossman, Niles West’s Track and Field Long Distance coach, screams over the bell signaling the last lap. “HEY MARC! IT’S THE TIME TO PASS THIS GUY! MOVE UP!! MOVE UP!!” he yells as Marc goes into a turn. Now, his eyes move away from the thin, pasty white stumps, a goodbye long awaited, as they turn to the track below. He pumps his arms with all his might, making sure to keep his knees high and his stride long. All he thinks about is the reward, there is no pain, even in the last 100 meters. As he crosses the finish line, the official tells him his time, 1:57.5, a new personal record. That would have been the ideal time to think about the pain, if there was any, but there wasn’t. Not then, at least.
