Penn Relays. After the 9.75 mile run on Friday, I laid my forehead on my desk and contemplated it all; I was beat--perhaps 50% nerves, 50% real malaise. I forgot about the nervous lethargy that hits you hours before a track meet. Back in the REM Green days, pre-race ritual was more yawn, less strider; more laying on the hard plastic bus bench feeling the hum of the tires wishing it all could hurry up and be a quaint college application bullet and less bobbing head to NWA and 2LIVECREW in the walkman. I carpooled with a friend in his 1990-something beater car listening to Bob Seger's "Nightmoves" on some crackling AM station while we rolled through rough sections of Philadelphia with giant banners of black heroes immaculately painted on the brick sides of the early 20th Century buildings with their brilliant spires and their gables. My car mate was running on the A team 800 and I was the B team 1600. The nervous conversation was all selfish 400 splits, almost as if we were talking to ourselves: "66s and I'm dead." "72s....gotta nail 72s." "64...if I even run a 64, it's over. I got to hit 68 that first lap." "69....can tolerate that maybe, an opening 69, but 66...I'm toast. God I feel like shit man." Seger now, rough and ready as he always is: "WORKING ON MYSTERIES WITH OUT ANY CLUES...WORKING ON THE NIGHT MOVES...." No, it wasn't Seger's "Against the Wind." That would have been too cliched. We both shut up after the burst of fatalistic times and my friend pushed his beater car into increasing traffic from the relays. After parking in an impossible space and slamming the meter with quarters, we strolled up to the hulking mass that is Franklin Field. Built a long time ago, and probably spaded by Italian immigrant masons with thick moustaches and 10 kids, Franklin Field is one towering mass of brick and mortar. Small pennants sat atop its steep spires and formed a tapestry of waving cloth. At its base, we flashed our competitor badges to a disinterested security guard who performed a token search on the inside of one of my T-4s. Inside the gates now. Athletes, a disparate mixture of athletes--all runners--form on either side of us. Unintentionally, racially and distance-segregated masses of young men and women doing token warmups come and go. Here, a clear group of white distance men jogging together; their hair all long, curly and unkempt, very 1970s-chic; their arms, rail thin; they are all perfected samples of lean body mass. They are white pictures of Iliac crests in Abercrombie and Fitch catalogs. There, on the other side, black sprinters in warm-up sweats--the flashing gold of their chains contrasting with their white, serpentine earbud cords--pumping their arms and legs in place. An enormous, out-of-place Army recruiting RV, reminiscent of the Urban Assault Vehicle in Stripes, is parked in the background of all this; it sits next to a gigantic blow-up Marine that wears a drill instructor hat. He's flexing his muscles for no one. We enter the stadium through brick arches and up high stairs. Shafts of light from the setting Friday sun form perfectly straight orange lines through the last set of the arches that lead out into the seats. I'm temporarily blinded by these rays and only hear the roar of the spectators as I feel my way out into it all....more roaring now, muffled announcers voice, followed by the crunch of fast spikes digging on rubber track. Below me, a long line of men with their college singlets pound it out around turn 4. The track surface itself looks older than I imagined; it's got inside lanes that are separated by a metal rail on the inside and a steeplechase obstacle with dirty, standing water on the outside lane. Men with cheesy red jackets, ties, and out-of-place baseball caps sit above it all in some watchtower carrying clipboards and acting official. A flashing screen behind them tells us the heat, the schools and the lane assignments as well as the times. Watching the watchers, watching all of us, sits an enormous castle for a building that cuts the stadium in a quarter. It's very Ivy League--almost Oxford, but not quite. Everyone else on the team wants to warmup; everyone's excited and chipper. But I'm so very 1989-bus ride; despite the sun, I'm cold and so I put on my monk jacket and curl up into a ball up near the top of the stands--away from it all. Some girl just got passed in the 4 x 400 relay and so the stadium makes one large bullfrog sound: WHHHHHOOOOOP......WHOOOOOOOPPPPP!!!!! I forgot about these track antics; track meets even in the late 80s had some yell or expression to denote some silly event. The midfields were always circles of boys--white and black--yelling out "YO MAMA'S SO OLD THAT...."-cutdowns followed by the water balloon wars across the inside lanes as we ran our 8 laps. So the WHOOOP and the primal dances really don't surprise me as much as it does others I suppose. More heats, more Whooping....more red-hatted old white men with hemorrhoids and power trips... It's our turn. We pick up our bags and head down to the paddock area which is nothing but an alleyway of nervous energy guarded by a red jacketed man with a clipboard and a broad mustache. Mini water bottles litter the ground, as do clumps of hats, shirts, sweats and bags. Racers are all lined up in a sequential order and we form some sort of papal conclave of uniformed silliness. We enter, lay down our things and then exit and run across the street to do warmups on the adjacent U. Penn campus. To the shock of my team, I don't warmup and my two striders are more a contemplative Capuchin monk with hands still in my jacket's pockets than a burst of explosive energy. I've got cottonmouth--another one of those things I forgot from the Green album days. Time to go! We run together back to the paddock and form up with the other corporate teams in a line. The red jackets scream out orders: "LEAD OFF LEGS....LETS GO! LEAVE YOUR SWEATS IN THE PADDOCK AREA!" We are waves of nervousness; I can't help but compare it all to standing in a jump door of a plane. The guys up front near the door, those poor bastards, they are so close to it all. I'm back here....I got some more time. Whew. My mouth crackles and my tongue has swollen with my nervousness. The smell of someone's Ben Gay permeates my nose as I adjust my uniform and slap a large "N" on my left hip; I'm the anchor for the 'N' team. "OKAY...ANCHOR LEGS....LETS GO...MOVE FORWARD!" It's a blur and before I know it I have the baton and begin to move out on the track. I pump my arms and look up at an empty stadium; the sun has set below the edges of the stadium and the shadows have come to bathe us all in darkness at certain turns. The run is boring. I realize it's slow and I just hope to not get passed and don't expect to pass the GE guy ahead of me, because I recognize him as a damn good runner. "GO DUNCAN!!" echoes at the corners of all my turns.....lactic acid.....iron taste.....hitting that damned inside rail with my feet a couple times....here comes the END! Hands go to my knees and I heave in the dark air. I move up next to the GE guy in the same position and ask him what he had for a time. He shrugs, "4:40 something?" (I was clocked at a 4:49 with a 69-second opening lap) There's something in the air --pollution or pollen or both. It sticks to all of our lungs and fills our alveoli; it causes the entire field to heave and hack in the gloaming; we are this as we stumble our way up to the awards ceremony. The ceremony is inside that castle that overlooks the field; it's upstairs in some ornate, wood-paneled room donated by tree-rings for now dead, once-rich alumni. Ancient guys in 3-point stances and leathern helmets stare back at us from behind portraits and dusty plaques. We throw our stuff at the feet of one of these pictures; it's a walrus-mustachioed man who died a hero in some forgotten war. His calvary sabers are crossed below his face and his real medals surround his chest; he gazes out at us through the fog of ignored dust. I sometimes feel like I'm the only guy that sees these things. He's clear to me and I stare at his medals: Purple Heart, Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star with 'V' device. Damn fine job. Real gimcrack I suppose. Enormous, open windows display the panorama of a now-dark, now-quiet track. The entire room is almost Oxford and Cambridge, but again, it falls short--the culprit this time, are the plastic cups, crunchy ice, and diet Pepsi drinks, served by a tired woman in a tee shirt. I go up and congratulate Ryan who really ran a super closing race, on very tired legs, to win it all for Raytheon. One of the red jackets then appears; he gives a rather lengthy speech about the glory of corporate competition and then hands out awards to people holding paper plates with cubes of Swiss cheese and stalks of lettuce. Corporate DMR gimcrack ceremonies at the Penn Relays are a bit more fancy than a Barney Fife 5k, but not by much. In the end it's always the same operatic theme: food on flimsy plates, impatience, shitty speeches, and greedy hands. At its conclusion, my team makes a beeline for a bar. By now the atmosphere of the relays has substantially changed. The fans, flashy black sprinters, and gangly, curly-haired distance white boys with the model Iliac crests, are long gone. U. Penn students--one gigantic crowd of over-achieving, application-embellishing, "society"-quoting High School presidents-- are now spilled out into the street wearing their backpacks and discussing intellectual things while making intellectual laughs. We find a tavern and recline at table in its loud basement next to a table with red-faced college men wearing backwards baseball caps. We all order greasy food and drink warm beer from wet glasses, raising them in a toast to a good race and a damn fine day.