I’ve been a runner since I was fifteen. I ran cross country and track in high school and college (much preferring cross country) and later competed in many road, trail, and mountain races. Over the course of the years some of my closest friends have been my teammates and fellow runners. But time and pounding take their toll. Now that I’m seventy, my right hip often aches at night, and many mornings I wake feeling awkward and stiff. But running has been a part of my life for so long that I can’t seem to stop, and a couple of days a week I still pull on my shorts and shoes and walk-jog one of my short neighborhood loops.

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I ran cross country at Vanderbilt University in the early 1970s. Although Vanderbilt is in the Southeastern Conference—a “power athletic conference”—Vanderbilt awarded no scholarships for running and provided almost no support—financial or otherwise—to the cross-country team. Those of us on the team weren’t elite runners, and we didn’t run for reward or acclamation; we ran because we loved to run, and our experiences on the team—good and bad—bonded us tightly. It was, for most of us, a formative experience. Now, fifty years later, I can honestly say that I don’t remember much about college, except for my teammates and experiences on the cross-country team.

The article below, in which I attempted to capture the essence of one season, appeared in slightly different form in the November 14, 1983, issue of Sports Illustrated.

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In this essay, written many years ago now, I tried to synthesize, in a terse, no-nonsense manner—like a hard interval workout—what the sport has meant to me.

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In November 2023 an old running buddy and I attended the NCAA men’s and women’s cross-country championships, which were held on a bucolic farm outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, where I now live. The setting was idyllic; the weather, balmy; and the event itself, surprisingly festive and fun. Afterward I felt an urge to write the article below, which reports on the event from the point of view of one grumpy old runner (me); features another grumpy old runner (my friend); and compares the sport of collegiate cross country in the United States today with the sport we knew and loved in the 1970s.