But at the same time it is.
Seeing as Racing the Rain only came out four days ago, I am guessing that many of you have not read/finished it. So fair warning, this will contain some spoilers.
Every runner has a three stage running career.
There is the finding and falling in love with the sport. This is the Rise.
There are the successes and woes of consistent training and racing. This is the Peak.
Lastly, there is the acceptance of age, and the nostalgia of the better days that accompanies it. This is the Decline.
And just as George Lucas gave us the Peak and Decline well before the Rise, our very own John L. Parker Jr. has done the same. We knew Luke would bring down the Dark Side, but still something was missing. The same goes for Quentin Cassidy, as his epic origin story needed to be revealed and not just guessed about.
I say that Racing the Rain is not for runners because most of the book is not about running. You will not find crazy interval work outs or 34 mile days. You will not find the wisdom nor advise of a hardened race tactician. You will not find the inspiration that you found in Once a Runner.
However what you will find is what Quenton found in Again to Carthage: Nostalgia.
Like most of us runners, Quenton Cassidy was not a runner. He had the attributes that all good runners need: a tremendous work ethic, a heart of a lion, and the patience needed to succeed. But again like most of us, running was never his first option. I myself played soccer through my sophomore year of high school, a sport I had played, loved, and invested thousands of hours into since I was four. But after some encouragement from my school's track coach and a one-day absolute-immersion into a book being passed around by the track team (can you guess what book it was?), I found myself leaving behind what I had been entwined with all my life, and all because of a bloody book about some fictitious miler from Florida?
Quenton Cassidy believed he was a basketball player. Despite being terrible at it until his mid-teens, his work ethic got him to make it to the second cut as a freshman. This is where Quenton first had a taste at distance running, as he got invited to join the track team after blazing a 63second 440 in gym class and nearly beating the schools best sprinter. By the end of his freshman season, Cassidy broke the county record in the half mile by over 4 seconds, running 2:03 as only a freshman (if you're thinking 'only 2:03? Mary Cain did that as a high school frosh.' remember that this is the 60s). Despite his early success, Quenton was still set on basketball. He worked incredibly hard during the summer, doing basketball workouts that required incredible cardio, and, despite his small size, he made the JV basketball team the next season. Of course he would do basketball over running. Popularity was the goal, and running was an outpost for the outcasts. Quenton continued basketball through his senior year, loving every minute of it until a new coach came in. Before the basketball season, the cross country coach convinced Cassidy to try a race. Quenton nearly won it (beat by some guy name Mizner) and was close to the county 2-mile record in his first race over a half mile. Early into the basketball season, Quenton convinced his basketball coach ("You want to miss practice to run a race? Who cares about running?) to let him run the Regional XC championship. He ran 9:42 and won easily. After a disagreement with the coach and subsequentially being kicked off the team, Quenton had lost the thing he had loved most but found the thing he would love even more. Cassidy found himself as a track athlete, a runner, and one who eventually clutch an oblong box with an olympic silver medal in it.
Racing the Rain is not for runners.
Racing the Rain is for our past selves. The selves that spent hours with a ball, lost and not yet found.
Racing the Rain gives us the nostalgia for our pre-conversion, the time before we could imagine running as an enjoyable sport and not just punishment for other sports.
Racing the Rain is written so that the reader playfully scorns Cassidy in his eventual fruitless pursuit of a basketball career because we all know where he ends up. It is written so that we can relate Cassidy's own coming-of-age story to our own.
So it may not hold the powerful inspiration that Once a Runner or Again to Carthage do, but Racing the Rain reveals a part of Quenton Cassidy's story that allows us to remember a part of our own.
Perhaps the most important part. Our beginning.