The first real race I ever ran in was on the old, battlescarred, 8-lane blacktop track at Lincoln High School. With the State Capitol building sneaking a peek over the top of the fenceline like some too-curious neighbor and my Reebok basketball shoes slapping down the straightaway, I remember my oversized shirt billowing behind me like a gray parachute and my Mom and Dad’s voices echoing off the cement steps of the grandstand.

I was in first grade, signed up to run against kids two years older than me but damn the age groups, I wanted to get out there and let it fly.

I remember getting my ass kicked that day, if we’re being totally honest. I remember the backs of those older kids in front of me, as they crossed the line at least a few steps ahead of me. But, I remember smiling.

And the feel of that prairie wind swooping low on those city streets and kissing the sweat on my bowl-cut forehead as I put my hands on my knees and stared down at my double-knotted sneakers — still humming with the drum roll of my feet having slap-dashed their way 100 meters as fast as my young legs could pump — sucking June air into my lungs as I tried to catch my breath.

And, I remember falling in love.

With a sport. With a place.

It’s the kind of permanent-ink memory, the kind of mental tattoo that might fade with time, but will never — can never — be fully removed.

I have run hundreds of races since. In stadiums from Miami, Florida to Fayatteville, Arkansas to Buffalo, New York and just about any small town with lanes and an oval in between, but that stadium will always be my home.

I remember being down on that sametrack, still a boy, readying for the city finals of the 400 meter dash, when the most Midwestern of summer intrusions decided to put an official hold on the proceedings: the tornado sirens went off, howling through the boiling skies that hissed and hung low over the events. And sprinters sprinted. Not to the tape, but to a laundromat across the street where friend and foe alike jammed shoulder to sweaty shoulder into the women’s restroom (*Author’s note: my fellow 11-year-old boys with eyes as wide as my own at this particularly cruel form of awkwardness).

I remember the feel of the red rubberized surface scraping across my knees as I fell across the line, legs fully of mutiny and acid, and I remember the feel of the hands that picked me up and helped me stumble into the infield where I had to contemplate silver-plated failure. I remember and remember and remember.

Always that sport. Always that place.

I do not write this, now, to attempt to turn your eyes to the past exploits on that track. No, merely to qualify my love of the Lincoln High School track and field program and the two curves and two straights that helped raise me for a good portion of my life.

If you want to talk Lincoln High track and field, the present and future are most certainly the correct place to start.