My parents didn’t give me 12 Tasks. I had to forge my own way into adulthood when I was growing up in Kenya in the 1960s. Sports became my rite of passage, my quest. I grew up big and tall. In my grade school class photos, I stand head and shoulders over the other kids. But I was slow and a bit clumsy. I guess I hadn’t grown into my body yet. Somehow, though, I already thought of myself as an athlete. Perhaps I was hero worshiping my older brothers as they played basketball and rugby.
Every time there was a try-out for a team in Titchie Swot (as we called the grade school at Rift Valley Academy) I turned up. I tried mightily. When the coach put up the list of players chosen for a match against a school in Nairobi, my stomach would be filled with butterflies as we all crowded around the bulletin board to see who had made the team. My name never made the list. Fourth grade. Fifth grade. By sixth grade I fancied myself as a good defender in soccer. We played hard every recess and nobody could dribble the ball around me. I tried out for the soccer team, sure I’d be chosen this year. I was told the team had a weight limit to stop other teams from cheating by putting in older players, and I was too big. I had to try out with the seventh graders. I got cut – again. I probably should have given up and concentrated on being a better aim with my catapult when we went pigeon hunting in the forest. In seventh grade I tried out again for soccer and rugby. Both times I was told I was too big and I had to try out for the Senior Colt team, which was for the ninth graders. I didn’t make the team.
In August vacation before I started eighth grade I decided I was always getting cut from the teams because I wasn’t fit enough. I came up with the idea of running a mile a day so I would be fit. Thirty miles in thirty days. I scrawled out a calendar so I could tick off each day as a record. I proudly told some of my friends – Bill Mackenzie, Skeeter Wilson and Jim Barnett – that I would be running a mile a day. I would run the dirt road that circled around the school compound and down in front of the Mackenzies’ house. They hooted with laughter. Bill, who had always made the soccer team and rugby team, snorted, “Why do you want to waste your time running a mile a day?” Somehow, I shrugged off their mocking words and I set off for my first mile. Running at 7200 feet above sea level is no joke. I was out of breath within a minute. My side ached, my legs hurt, sweat dripped off my forehead and into my eyes. But I finished the mile without stopping. The second day was easier. My friends never joined me, but they looked on with a bit of respect as I’d announce that I had to run another mile. I ran thirty miles that month.
I don’t know if the running really helped or whether I finally grew into my body, but in the first term of eighth grade I tried out for the ninth grade Senior Colts team (I was still too big to be with my peers) and to my surprise and joy I found my name chosen to play fullback. Two terms later, I tried out for the Senior Colt rugby team and was chosen to play lock forward. I rubbed my ears raw in the scrum and I was afraid to tackle the big kids from St Mary’s school, but I learned the basics of the game and loved being a part of the team.
My family went to the USA for six months after my eighth grade year and I played freshman football (more about that in a future blog post). We had a tough coach and by the end of the season (we lost all six games by big scores!) I’d endured so many tackling drills that I was no longer afraid to tackle. As we headed back to Kenya, I said to my younger brother Brian, “When I’m in tenth grade, I will be playing varsity for RVA in three sports – soccer, basketball and rugby.” It was an audacious dream. I hadn’t even played at the junior varsity level in any sport. My brother didn’t think it was realistic. He was right. But as a ninth grader I made the junior varsity team in rugby, mostly because I was no longer afraid to tackle. Near the end of the season, when one of the varsity players was sick, I was called up to play a varsity rugby game against Lenana School. The game ended in a 15-15 draw. I had exceeded my goal in one sport by played a varsity rugby game in ninth grade.
Before my tenth grade year I began running one mile in the morning and another in the evening. To my amazement, I moved right into the varsity soccer team that year. The next term I was chosen to be on the varsity basketball team. And in third term, I became the starting flanker for the varsity rugby team. I had reached my goal. And it had started with me deciding in eighth grade to run thirty miles in thirty days.
So when my wife and I decided to create a rite of passage for our children, and we wanted to give them a physical challenge, I immediately thought of having them run thirty miles in thirty days. It wasn’t easy for some of my kids. You can read about that in the book 12 Tasks. But they persevered, and just as running thirty miles in thirty days had proved instrumental in my moving from a clumsy childhood to adulthood, this task was one of the steps each of my children also took along the same journey.