Bonnie Falls into Love part II.02.22.24
Copyright Catcher78 all rights reserved
It's funny how minutes, hours, days, months fall into years when stability comes into your life. I was three weeks away from graduating with a degree in math from the University of Washington and I was stretching out and doing my breathing mantra a Zen thing my distance coach Aiko had taught me, she was a tiny thing and had taught me everything I knew about running.
She was forty and still ran marathons. We were close and when her wife was gone, she'd call me and I'd sprint over and she wore me out. Talk about being stretched out, sweet Jesus. No toys, just fingers and her sweet fucking mouth. She could make me bark like a dog. I'd never told her, but I wished I was hers and died inside when I saw her and her wife together.
I'd been running the ten thousand meters now and I had qualified for the Pac12 championships, with the seventh best time in conference meets. Four of the better times were from our freshman dynamo Tina Nordstrom, a tiny little girls five foot two, one hundred pounds dripping wet. She was a freak of nature, never seemed to feel pain, tiny stride, but so damn many of them.
For every one of my now six foot tall, long strides she took two and a half. If she need to kick, then she increased to three or more to my one. My whole strategy was to get out fast, attack and attack some more early on and then hold on and hope nobody could catch me, hardly ever did I have left in me for a kick.
This was the last meet in the Stadium ever, they were going to tear out the field and raise the surface and put in more seats, where the track currently was. The open end towards Lake Washington would be enclosed. The stadium seated sixty five thousand. There might be close to a thousand people associated with the teams here today.
I looked up and saw my moms and my little sisters and the girls jumped up and down and screeched at me. Moms, Hannah and Silvia were hugging each other so excited and worried for me, they both always crossed their fingers for me and they held them up. Oh God, almost lost my center spot, love could do that for me.
I was off, running as hard as I could. There twenty five laps in this race and God, I don't think I'd ever felt this good in a race. Big carbo load yesterday and so much water. Spaghetti, boiled rice, bread pudding (my favs), so much water and green tea.
I had the lead at the end of the first lap of eighty feet. I was a big girl and that little bitch was going to have to run her guts out. Where did that come from? I had this jam going on in my head, Dan Fogeberg singing the old Cascades song Rhythm of the Falling Rain and way out in the last lap Tina Turner, I was saving that for the last lap and then Tina was shrieking about what's love got to do with it.
I could feel her outside my shoulder grunting loud, I saw Aoki screaming at me to kick baby!!
I never kick, but there it was and my long legs were ripping out some serious strides. Like I never had before. She called me baby and I burst through the tape. I looked back and Tina had fallen off and was passed by two others.
I collapsed and was crying and my body was telling me I was going to pay for this. George Tolles who did the public address stuff at Husky stadium said, "Ladies and gentlemen, that was Bonnie Kendrick of the University of Washington Huskies with the conference record of thirty one minutes, and thirty five seconds. Second fastest time in NCAA history.
I was buried under Aoki and Tina screaming and hugging me and then it was my moms and sisters and so many tears. The medical staff gave me bottle after bottle of their proprietary Pedialyte drinks which my body badly needed. I walked with my family through the tunnel and asked them to wait outside the locker room while I took a shower and got my stuff. That took me ten minutes and we slowly walked to the parking lot. Jenny and Rose were like magpies and like twins finishing each other's sentences and saying the same thing at the same time. For me it was the sweetest sound.
Our family car was an old rebuilt Isuzu Trooper with a rebuilt engine. Five speed. Hannah was maybe five feet tall in heels, she cracked me up pounding through gears as she weaved from one lane to another to get us to the ferry terminal to catch the Bremerton run. Girls were in car seats to each side of me. I had my feet stretched out through to the consul. Sylvia was rubbing my deeply callused feet.
Runner's reality for sure.
We did make it and Sylvia took the twins upstairs. Hannah, says, "What's next for you honey?"
"I only have one more test, math final next Friday. I turned in a couple of papers and that's it. There's a team track awards banquet next Saturday. I'm not sure if I'm going to go."
"Why wouldn't you go?"
I put my head down and I was crying softly at first and then a damn broke loose.
"Baby, oh honey," she had climbed through between the seats and was in my lap and hugging me and rocking me.