Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Doriffic

Doris Brown Heritage was my cross country coach for the year that I ran at SPU. While the good times are countless, there's one vision that stands out: It was sometime in August when the team headed to the Oregon Coast for our annual summer retreat, a guaranteed weekful of challenging beach runs, teammate bonding, bottomless spaghetti, and all the homemade brownies we could stomach.


Doris's 57th birthday happened to fall on one of the days we were to be down there, so of course we had to stage a celebration. We stopped at an outlet mall along the way, picking up balloons, streamers, sillystring, and a pinata from Where's The Party. On the evening of Doris's big day, a few of us took her on a run while the others went to town w/ the decorations, stringing the patio of our beachside cabin w/ crepe paper and a cheesy banner. Upon her return, we blindfolded Doris and handed her a bat. We told her to take a good hard whack at the rainbow horse hanging before her, which she did. Over and over again. Now, however ripped she is (muscularly speaking), w/ not an ouce of fat on her form, Doris is not an imposing figure. On the contrary, she's about 5'2" and very small-boned. So if you can imagine one such woman, dressed in a tracksuit w/ a bright red sweatband stretched across her forehead, whacking away tirelessly at a dangling piece of cardboard in the manner of a wood splitter, you've got it. In due time, Doris had Starbursts and Jolly Ranchers flying in every direction. When I say I've never laughed so hard--tears, snot, doubled over, all that--I might actually mean it. Top ten, anyway.

But while this story sans context might sound reducing, even kind of demeaning, you have to know a little about the woman in order to appreciate its broader application.

Doris Heritage, a two-time Olympian and five-time world cross country champion, started what would become a lifelong running career, in saddle shoes. Growing up a girl in the 50s, she was of course denied the right to participate in school sports, so why outfit her in trainers? Thus, in footwear typically paired w/ frilly jumpsuits, she joined her Gig Harbor friends on bikerides--running along beside them. She was also known to speed repeatedly up and down her driveway. Whatever it took to get her fix.

Without such relentlessness, it's hard to imagine Doris would've made it as far as she did in an environment so wary of athletic women (they'll get arthritis!). But she's crazy, crazy in the absolute best possible way, which I believe permitted her to whack her way from dirt roads & 'no girls allowed' to Olympic stadiums & world bests. Following a total hip replacement in 2004, the woman's still swinging.

Below, a recent reference to Doris (page 2) in the current RW. Hardly close-mouthed when it comes to her Christian faith, she speaks often of the interrelatedness of her running practice and her spirituality, as she does here.


Posted by princess kanomanom @ 3:25 PM