Prairie Schooner

March 1, 1692, was the start of one of the darkest and gloomiest times for the early United States. It was the date that the infamous Salem Witch Trials began. In a historical event made famous by Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, three women (Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba) were brought before the local magistrates in Salem Village after three young girls accused them of witchcraft. Those girls claimed that Good, Osborne, and Tituba afflicted them, afflictions that resulted in bodily injury. Interestingly, the three women singled out were social outcasts. Good was a beggar whose impoverished state was caused by the loss of her inherence and her first husband’s debt, for which she and her second husband were held responsible. Osborne was likely accused because she had not attended church for almost three years (although she had the excuse of a long-standing sickness).

I accidentally joined the cross country team on my first day of high school, having never run a mile. My new art teacher was the coach, and I happened to be in his office when he was passing out permission slips, which I thought were for art.

My father had died on the last day of school two and a half months before, and I would cry during practice when we did fartlek, or any drills with a funny name. I came in last in one of our first big meets when the other girls I was running with toward the back all cheated by cutting across a field, and I kept going on the course. About half the people who came out for the team quit, a point of pride for those of us who stayed.

My friends and I made t-shirts that said “young and scrappy,” a phrase used to describe our team in the local paper. I got faster and stronger and stopped crying. “See how her body has changed!” my art teacher announced to the class.

Our final 3:33 Sports Short this week is the second part of a Julia Shipley two-peat and the first post to explore the strange barbarism of the eating contest. Thanks for reading, and, I've said it before and I'll say it again, for more great sports writing purchase our Winter Sports Issue for just $9.

This Christmas, my parents bought me a watch that tracks steps and monitors heart rate, syncs the data to an app. I trek around my city trying to take pride in stairs climbed, calories burned, badges earned, but usually the numbers feel empty. I feel like I’m posing in a world I don’t belong to—or worse, like I’m pretending to be someone I left behind long ago.

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One night during my first winter running seventy miles per week, I found myself at a party in a smoky basement with one good friend and a swarm of strangers.

“This guy,” my friend introduced me, “he loves running. Running is his life.”

One man asked why I wore my running watch upside down, the face on my wrist’s underside. I told him it was easier to hit the lap button, a quicker flick to check my pace.