Humans have a rather complicated relationship with running: there’s the hellacious elementary school Presidential fitness test in which ten-year-olds are required to sprint back and forth across an un-airconditioned basketball court, slapping the out-of-bounds line as they scramble to beat an ever quickening, loud beep of elimination. There’s the sadistic high school cross country coach who has specifically chosen the largest hill in town for sprint workouts; the last runner to make it to the top has to jog back down and sprint up over and over (on exhausted legs) until her time miraculously improves. There’s the pictures of happy, sweaty friends on Facebook (filtered on Instagram) who’ve just completed yet another half-marathon when we claimed a victory last week after making it a full fifteen minutes without stopping. There’s the long-list of expensive and inconvenient impact injuries: shin splints, stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, patellofemoral pain syndrome, Achilles tendonitis, iliotibial band tendonitis, hip misalignment — and of course — the overwhelming amount of discomfort and heaving for air in the first ten minutes of running in general.
But yet, we still lace up and go…or we at least think/have thought about doing so. It’s methodic: one foot in front of the other for upwards of 7,500 strikes. It’s precious — an uncanny ability to hit the ground with three to four times your own body weight and not shatter the bones in your toes. It’s human — running from stress or worry, running for the relief of endorphins, running for health, or, as this university has done for the past seventeen years, running to remember.
She died when I was four years old, when I was just learning to run fast through leaf piles in our front yard with my little brother.
Leslie Baltz was an intellectually curious, passionate studio art/art history major recently returned from a study abroad trip to Italy. She hadn’t been a high school track super-star, but she’d come to running as most of us do — striving toward a recommended 30 minutes of moderately intense exercise five days a week. She was working on a promising thesis, painting for pleasure, and just starting to pick up considerable distance on her long runs when her life ended. She died in a high-risk drinking accident on the morning of the last home football game. She had been left alone.
A couple of weeks ago, I called Leslie’s mother, Vivian, to request her presence at the Fourth Year 5K, a race that has become a treasured part of this university for the past twenty-three years, adopting Leslie’s memory for the last seventeen. She and her daughter’s college roommates and friends come down to Charlottesville every year, now with strollers and plenty of extra little runners, to honor Leslie. The Fourth Year 5K is a healthy alternative, the morning filled with Dean Groves dolling out high-fives, Cav Man doing cartwheels, and nervous runners joking about slower times or crawling the race. I picked up the phone in high spirits, an avid runner and daughter constantly trying to make my own parents proud; for a brief moment, I had forgotten that Leslie was gone. Speaking with Mrs. Baltz was one of the hardest conversations I’ve had in my twenty-one years of life.
She surprised me, hitting a powerful theme of this year by stating, “this is not the race where we tell students not to drink. This is the race in which we ask this university community to never leave its students, friends, roommates or random bus conversationalists alone, especially in high-risk situations. This is the race in which we hold ourselves personally accountable not only for our own well being, but especially for the health of others no matter how we’ve formed a connection with them.”
The year after Leslie’s death, the Fourth Year 5K had about 100 runners. As of last Friday, we have 913 University students of all years, faculty and community members committed to run. Shocked and with still a week left for registration, we are quickly stuffing race packets and rush ordering more long-sleeved shirts — feel free to walk or run at your own pace (there are no beeps of elimination) and the course is steep-hill-sprint free. There will be plenty of opportunities to take your sweaty post-race photo and, in the case of injury, we’ve got some volunteer EMTs on hand too. Please join us in creating a caring university community and in breaking 1,000 registrants in honor of Leslie Baltz.
This is the year that we’ll run to remember.
The race will take place on November 22nd at 8 a.m. in the Amphitheatre and is part of Substance Abuse Prevention Week. A portion of proceeds from the race will be donated to the Leslie Baltz Foundation which provides scholarships for art history majors to study abroad.
Sandra Menendez is a fourth-year in the College and a Peer Health Educator.
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