The Race of Life

This story took second place in Sports Feature Writing during the 2007 Wyoming Press Association awards.

The race of life

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

I asked Seth Townsend how long he had been sober. He paused, looked down at his left bicep and flexed. There, amid the plethora of body art, were three numbers 08-24-04.

“I’m all tattooed up so I remember it,” Townsend says. “Just so I remember.”

Steve Smoot remembers Seth well.

“He was a talented athlete,” Smoot, Seth’s cross country coach in high school, says. “He probably could have played football. He’s an athlete at a 3A school who can pick any sport and have some success. He and some of his friends, they chose to run. He was on my best boy’s team ever but he was the fifth man. He wasn’t the top runner but, man, he was a great support guy.”

I sit in his dining room, seated across the table from me is Seth’s youngest, 4-year-old Kamdynn, scribbling furiously in her coloring book. While the tattoos ingrained in his skin give hints at a hard past, nothing in this scene would tell of a life fallen apart, and then rebuilt with the help of running. As a junior and senior in high school, Townsend was an integral part of the 1993 and 1994 Bearcats cross country teams that took home consecutive state championships. After high school, however, Townsend’s life took a devastating turn.

“I got hard-core into drugs and alcohol and ended up in rehab,” Townsend says. “When I got out I got back into running. It was something I always knew I would get back into once I got my head on straight. It’s something I can do with my whole family.”

For Townsend, his road to recovery has featured many roads, as well as many trails and grasslands. Hundreds of miles have passed under his weathered shoes. Many hours have been spent pounding the pavement, mile after mile, reinventing not just himself, but his entire family.

“For me it’s personal gain. I’m trying to better myself from where I was. Also, just to show my kids. I want them to see the outlets there are other than going up to Esterbrook and partying,” Townsend says. “I guess it’s different for everybody, going to rehab. Everyone has their own reasons, but mine was my family. I wanted to get my life back in order. You don’t realize how much you’re screwing it up sometimes.”

Most families, in fact, most people, myself included, would cheer Seth. They would stand on the side of the race and extend a paper cup of water. They would support him as his body gives out at the end of another grueling half-marathon. But Seth’s family goes a step further. They run the race too.

It was Kamdynn’s own idea to run the Bolder Boulder 10K this year. She had seen her dad, her mom Jamie, her grandfather Mark, her brothers Kenyion and Kohlten, even Seth’s three half-sisters Lisa, Heather and Sarah run, and she did not want to be left out. The Bolder Boulder featured nine Townsends. Seth ran the race with his dad, then ran back to where his wife and children were and finished the race at their sides. A family united. A family that had traveled much further than ten kilometers.

“He lost his way,” Smoot says. “He got into drugs and alcohol, and he’ll tell you that. He was a screwed up puppy. Finally, he reached his bottom, said ‘I’m tired of this’ and he knew running had been something that had been good and positive in his life. Not the wins, not the recognition, but what it was doing for him on the inside. He knew that was a way that he could get that balance that he needed in his life.”

The man seated in a wooden chair in front of me is a man rebuilt. It is a man who has fallen and who has gotten back up and suddenly found himself taller than when fell.

“It’s not about running, I mean, yeah it is, but it’s a lot about life too,” Smoot said. “He really wants to be the dad and he wants to be the husband and he wants to be the man he needs to be. He wants to help others that have gone through the problems that he’s had to struggle with.”

This last weekend Seth ran Meeteetse Absaraka Challenge with his entire family. The grueling course starts with four and a half miles of incline, followed by a scramble over loose ground to the top of a hill before a terrifying descent atop loose gravel. Seth has also tackled the Deadwood Mickelson half-marathon June 3, the Wagenbach Social June 30, the Indian River Peaks Trail Run Aug. 4 with high school runners Derek Enciso and Max Deininger, the Shane Shatto 5k and the Rock Cut Hobo 15.5 mile run. His goal is to run a marathon next year, and to get back to racing at his high school times.

“Running is up and down. You’ll have a really good week of training and the next week it’s hard to walk out to door (to run). I don’t know what drives me. Mainly, I’m just in a habit now. About 2-3 months in I knew I was going to keep doing it,” Seth says. “I don’t really even know why I started running. Now, it’s just something I do. It’s something I do instead of partying. It helps recovery.”

Seth, co-owner of his own construction company for nine years,  tackles 35-40 miles of training a week and has already reduced his time from eight-minute mile paces to just over six minutes per mile. He stays in contact with Smoot, receiving workout suggestions and advice about racing.

“I just call him and he helps me train,” Seth says. “He tells me what I need to do. How much distance and how many hills. He knows all that stuff. I’ll call him once in awhile for advice.”

Seth looks me right in eye when I ask him how he deals with the mental and physical pitfalls of running. I ask him how he deals with the pain of running 9,000 feet above sea level, about the vertical involved in many races in the area. How does he do something that can be so difficult? He smiles.

“What I’ve been through before running, there’s not a cramp or a pain or a stitch that can be any worse than where I was when I was using drugs and alcohol,” he says. “I could run until I puked and I’d feel better than I did back in the day. I know I can’t hurt myself running like I could when I was drinkin’ and druggin’. Running to me is easier than anything I’ve done.”