How I “Passed” The Mile Run 8 Years After High School

In the end, I think I just needed to go back to the Mile run and try. Like, really try.

Molly Horan, Refinery 29

One of my earliest memories of P.E. is the dreaded Mile run test, an annual calamity masquerading as "fitness assessment" that for some reason the adults in charge of curriculum thought was a great idea. I can still see my fifth grade self running those 5,280 feet and I cringe at the memory of the mess of bodily fluids and medical professionals I once passed by.

Here's how it went down: After my fellow 10-year-olds and I were given the traditional pre-cardio ice cream sandwich, we were let loose on the soggy lawn by the side of our school. By the time we had finished our laps, one classmate with a hacking cough worse than a TB patient had thrown up, an asthmatic kid was in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask, and at least half of us had at some point slipped on a cluster of acorns and slid into a kid-sized ditch. As for me? I for the most part side-stepped catastrophe, jogging for the few seconds it took to light my lungs and thighs on fire, before easing into a stroll, and repeating that 'til I was done.

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