Star Crossed Runners
(printed in NGTF mag July 2022 words edition)
I’ve never dated a runner, fine, other than my high school boyfriend for a few months junior year. I was injured the entire time we dated though so we didn’t even count as a running couple. We aqua jogged together at the YMCA once, and only once, because then he got pink eye.
I began dating people a little more seriously I guess in college, and noticed a force field that pulled me into relationships with guys who did literally anything else other than running. I definitely didn’t run or aqua jog with any of my College Boyfriends and it wasn’t intentional to avoid runner boys romantically, but that’s how the cards unfolded. Tennis, fencing, volleyball. Mostly femboy, low BMI kind of “athletes.” I didn’t go crazy and date a frat bro or something, I know that’s what you were probably thinking. No, just guys from every other lame, weird sport out there.
In college, I doubled down on other parts of my personality so people didn’t think I was just a neurotic runner. I shoved my athlete backpack into the depths of my dorm closet, replacing it with some trendier and less practical tote bag. I took my Timex off after practice. I’d hide the tube of Body Glide when my non-runner friends jumped in my Jeep. I would ask enough questions about how their day was going and put on enough semi-good indie music to distract them from the fact that my day included a shakeout and a track workout and a lift and I wouldn’t drink tonight because a Very Important Race was coming up. I didn’t want to talk about that. It’s not how I wanted to build friendship. Or a romantic relationship. So beat! So dating a runner boy didn’t happen for me, but it’s probably because I tried so very hard to not be seen as a runner. Maybe I could just happen to be one. Like ‘Oh yeah, there she is, running again’ was just an off handed side comment in passing. Something that feels natural. Like a leaf that happened to land on an unread copy of Lolita, bringing people’s attention to the image on the cover for just a second, its lips taken lightly. Running could be something my friends see I guess, but I’d always hoped they’d forget about me doing it just as quickly. A part of me, not all of me.
Now, three years out of college, three years since I last put on spikes and bunners and a jersey, but still involved in the sport somewhere deep deep deep in running media, I’m curious: What is up with runner couples? I guess I’ll go straight to the source to find out.
***
It’s a really sunny day. It’s the day before the Fourth of July and the middle of the afternoon. Cooper Teare and Rachel McArthur sit side by side in oversized wicker chairs on the porch. They’re set up like we’re about to do an interview with a live studio audience. We’re on FaceTime. He fucks with me and says he’s in Florida on the beach. He doesn’t know I’m in Rhode Island on the beach. I tell him where I am so he decides to tell me the truth. The golden boy is in his home state of California with his beautiful girlfriend, who’s just as much of a golden girl as he is boy, but she’s from Virginia, the state that is for lovers according to their official slogan apparently.
This entire story is subject to truth and untruth. It’s a cardinal rule in journalism to build a little trust with your subject before going in for kill-shot questions, but I didn’t know he was already going to be such a swindler. I have my work cut out for me. I don’t know Cooper and Rachel that well, and think we can all agree that something as delicate and disappearing as love is hard to put your finger on, or nail the order of events. When you start to explain it, it gets clumsy.
Cooper and Rachel have known each other since junior year of high school. Rachel is quick to correct him. She says they met senior year. “We both won nationals and we met there,” she says, matter-of-factly. Cooper isn’t convinced. He thinks they met at Brooks PR. To which Rachel seems to be convinced is correct, but now says it was sophomore year. This makes Cooper unconvinced and he circles back to where he started and says, “No junior.” He reminds us both that he didn’t make Brooks PR sophomore year. For a second, I get the sense he’s holding a grudge for not getting a golden ticket. He’s obviously made up for it in other ways by now. At 22 years old, already too fast to run at the University of Oregon, now winning championship races in a Nike kit, but says, “Yeah, running's kind of been like the center of it.”
Without their success in the sport at a young age, the high school running IT girl and IT boy would’ve never dated. From opposite sides of the country, they only met by the grace of track meets. What matters is how fast you run, not where you came from. That’s how the stars align. First comes Milesplit, then comes TFRRS, then comes World Athletics, Instagram is somewhere in there, and then comes… a boyfriend or girlfriend? The running community is so prescriptive and small. “When you're at a certain level, everyone kind of knows each other,” Cooper says. Rachel counters him, “Yeah. If you're good!”
Cooper tells me ALL the high school boys used to say, “Oh, Rachel's fine.” And nobody ever did anything about it. “Especially me,” Cooper says to me now. He never even really thought of it, only a little bit in high school, but this idea came and went, and then Rachel finishes his sentence for him and says there was no interest like that from either of them, until he did something, maybe last summer?
They have a choppy and chipper way of going back and forth. Sometimes they repeat each other, sometimes one person says something and the other one responds immediately just to be a contrarian, reality-testing the answer without caring if what they say is actually true or false. Other times they finish each other’s sentences like they know what each other is thinking. Sometimes I have a hard time understanding who said what, but this also doesn’t really matter, because they have a way of either agreeing or challenging each other with every turn of phrase and it balances them out in their own little world, a world that includes a real and imagined audience.
Cooper tells me he slid into her DMs in high school. “We were not friends… Maybe acquaintances at best.” I ask if he used the fire emoji but immediately get self-conscious that I’d come across as cheugy. He actually used the heart emoji and Rachel even replied to his message. Phew. She liked his heart emoji too. That was enough for Cooper to think “she kind of asked me to slide in…” I’m confident that’s not how the past, present and future works, or action and reaction. But it’s Cooper Teare and he’s basically Kanye for runner geeks, so he can do whatever he wants and could change his name or the order of space and time and how making a move and replying to a move works.
But the 2022 U.S. 1500m champ is still impressionable. (Maybe it’s his defining trait!) He makes more money than I’d ever dream of asking for as a raise, but Cooper is still somewhat of a kid and listens to his friends. In high school they told him what to post on Instagram because they promised him if he posted this, Rachel would like it. That’s how he thinks this started. “Guess what? She was the third person to like it!” he tells me with a huge boyish grin. It’s very cute. “We talked like this during high school. We’d snapchat a little bit. Like children.” He doesn’t know I find this adorable, but I think he’s a little embarrassed of the origin story so I tell him that's how this usually starts.
For a while in high school, they only knew of each other, which is a completely different thing than knowing each other. Cooper and Rachel both won an event in New Balance Indoors and they had to take an obligatory post-race photo together as champions. There was no touching, just them standing next to each other, faces real close together. They think it’s hilarious and wholesome now, which it is. It’s like they took a picture with their crush before it was actually their crush and NB Nationals was this unspoken relationship reveal (!) form of manifesting.
“Obviously we were friends throughout college,” Cooper says to me. I didn’t know that was obvious. “You kind of see everyone and make friends with ‘em.” He doesn’t mean everyone, he means everyone that’s fast and it begins to seem like fast collegiate runners might be a part of a cryptic secret society, like the illuminati or Scientology members or something. But their relationship’s start was random, they say. Every once in a while one of them would reply to an Instagram story and I’m getting the sense that without running they wouldn’t have dated, but they also wouldn’t have dated without social media. “But we were not friends very, very much,” says Rachel. Were they, or weren’t they friends?, I say like I’m a detective narrating to the audience in a shitty Y2K era mystery movie.
They’re obviously dating now. I asked them what changed. Rachel says Cooper got really fast. She’s comfortable to fuck with me too. Or maybe she’s telling the truth? I asked her if she put the speed goggles on. Shit, did I just use another boomer reference? She says she’s just kidding, maybe. So am I, maybe. But actually, a couple years passed by and it wasn’t until Cooper went to Boulder and they were in the same vicinity that sparks flew. And during the summer, Boulder is for runners what Israel Birthright is for Jews. Everyone goes out, sweats profusely across vast expanses of land to get closer to God probably. Then according to Cooper, everybody ends up at the same party. If you weren’t invited yourself then you probably at least have friends who have friends who will bring you to that party. The fast runners illuminati party. That’s how they became IRL friends. Neither one made a move here, but the people around them did. Neither of them want to take responsibility for starting this. She admits social media instigated it first, but then in person other people instigated it. I wonder if Cooper actually sent the heart emoji or maybe it was one of his friends.
“It's not that bad,” Rachel tells me about doing distance. Cooper follows up, “It's not that bad.” They’re doing that thing couples do and are constantly repeating each other. It’s probably much easier to maintain a relationship nowadays because of social media. But Rachel thinks it’s because they’re pretty busy with running and up, until recently, school. “We both have a lot going on, we do things, so it's not bad.” It’s only bad when they spend a lot of time together and then don't. Cooper finishes her sentence this time.
He’s convinced that doing the same sport is actually very helpful. I get the sense that he wants to convince me to date a runner. Or maybe he’s just building up the case for himself. Every two weeks or so there was the possibility they’d be at the same meet. The uncertainty is kind of romantic. Meets last usually two or three days max, so they don't get a lot of time to spend together, but they’d get to hang out a little bit and see each other compete. This longing for each other across the racing season sounds kind of cute. They wound up being at the same meets almost every other week, and Cooper thinks this was helpful because they can’t leave during the year to go see one another. “We end up meeting in the middle, wherever it might be, whether it was Pac12s or NCAAs.” A runner’s way of compromising. <3
“The first time we actually hung out was probably after NCAAs Outdoor,” Cooper says. So I guess the party in Boulder happened after NCAAs. But what about New Balance Nationals? Either that moment of manifesting doesn’t count as meeting meeting or they have no idea when they met. It doesn’t matter. They clearly love the moment they’re with each other on the porch in California.
***
Cooper’s mom worries he’s paying too much attention to girls and not enough on racing. “She’s always like, ‘Well you have to focus, don't do too much.’ Like mom I'm not. So we just hang out and watch TV,” he says. I overheard a prominent Fast Girl at the post-NCAAs party this year say how she prefers to be single when she’s competing because it's too much work to maintain a relationship and she just wants to focus on running. Are you kidding me? Girl, your long-distance relationship where you only see your boyfriend every few months is not so much of a time commitment that it’s DiStRaCtInG yOu FrOm YoUr TrAiNiNg. If anything, being in a relationship would be helpful because you’d have somebody you love to talk to and ease some of your nerves. But I guess not everyone has the same perspective and I know you’re begging for me to reveal the name of my anonymous source but I'm not gonna say who it was. I just thought that was kind of bizarre.
When I was prepping questions, I thought about asking them, “What's your favorite thing to do together?” I immediately realized that's a terrible question. When you're in a relationship, at least a good one, you don't really have an agenda with what you're usually doing. I asked them what's the weirdest thing that they like to do together. “Every once in a while we like to interlock our toes.” Cooper says this without hesitation. Rachel gives him a doubtful look and he doubles down. “We do, do that!” Rachel racks her brain for something else. “We like to cook? No we don’t… We like to bake? I don't think we do anything either. We definitely do… I just can't think of it. Yoga, like, unconventional yoga.” She’s satisfied with this answer. Cooper tells me not to take that the wrong way. Rachel says no, I can.
I’m not sure what kind of yoga they’re into. I do know they attempt to do some of the TikTok challenges. Like really bad TikTok trends. “The one that you did that you posted when we broke the wine glass?” But Rachel returns to thinking and says, “Weird things we do. If it doesn't involve online, I don't know anything weird.” She asks him what is something they do regularly. “Dude? All we do is watch Netflix and get coffee,” Cooper says. Then he looks at the camera more confessionally and says, “I don't even like coffee.” Rachel tells me, yes he does. He likes vanilla lattes. I remind her she had to drink his vanilla latte during one of the Butter Boys tailgates during NCAAs. Cooper backs her up, “I like the foam and then like a little bit of the coffee” and his defense is probably just for her sake, which is kind of sweet.
Ok, there’s one benefit of dating a runner because girls and boys are nearly the same size. Cooper wears the same size pants and shirts as Rachel apparently. He has this one shirt from her house from Virginia. “We pick out clothes and go shopping and then share probably 90%.” They seem to understand reciprocity. They share. Cooper is adamant that they’re not that interesting and now says he doesn’t wear her clothes. Only she wears his clothes. But he has that one shirt from her house in Virginia? I don’t think it’s weird, or embarrassing, but he reminds me, “We're not that weird.” Then, they go off into their own little world, imagining an audience again, making statements like, “You're crazy,” “That is so crazy,” “Ohhh I don’t know.”
They’re both injured. So they don’t go on runs together. My delusion of what it would be like to date a runner boy dies hard with their response. Cooper’s hurt, and Rachel’s hurt, but they’re both in love, and she’s still running for some reason. Running can be a big part of their relationship but just not together at the same time. “No, actually we've almost never been on a run together. Just us to go for a run. That's never happened.” He suggests, “Maybe we’re each other's kryptonite.” Whenever they’re around each other, one usually bikes while the other runs.
A few years ago, I begged my then-boyfriend, a fencer, to run around Fresh Pond with me in the middle of winter in Cambridge. He hated the whole experience. It was hilarious for a few minutes then got weird because I felt bad for taking him on this quest that is torture for anybody who doesn’t run everyday. Do Rachel and Cooper run together? She says if they ran together she’d talk too much and she wouldn’t be breathing. One time Cooper was running a tempo right around sub-five pace and she was biking next to him. She asked him if he believes in God. “I'm like, now? I figured you're gonna pop this question eventually. But now?”
“If I was running, when you were running next to me, I would feel like ick,” Rachel says with a laugh. “I would feel weird. I wouldn't like it.” Cooper objects, as though onstage, this obligation of his to be The One Who Can Play It Cool, “I wouldn't feel weird,” sounding sincere even though he’s laughing now too, and says, “I would be honored to run with you. Even if you were a little out of breath.” Rachel says, “Trust me. I would never be. We would be so calm together.” Running is something that they talk about more than they do with each other. A topic of conversation but not a shared activity.
Still, I think my refusal to date a runner boy is the hill I’m going to die on. Why I've always been drawn to dating guys that don't run is because I want to get away from all the gossip and drama of running. It's sort of this escape in a way. But having someone that also understands running and isn't on the same team sounds kinddd of similar. They don't have the same bias in whatever you're going through but they still get it.
I think about how we might be similar then Cooper defends his inclination toward runner girls like it is the hill he’s going to die on. Cooper tells me they don’t talk about running alllll the time and then starts giggling. What else could they possibly talk about! Rachel wants to know what he’s laughing about. Well, it’s me. That’s fine, I’m relieved he’s comfortable enough with someone asking him questions about his intimate relationship to make fun of me. What are you laughing about Cooper? “You're like I wanna get away from it. But honestly now we have like two times as much gossip because she has her team. She knows mine, which is really funny because you can get away from it if you want, but you can also double down and really just get it off your chest.” Kk, sinister point taken.
My preference for non-runners might be a weakness to them. Rachel says a lot of people need the distraction outside of the sport and that's completely fair. “A lot of people” in the abstract but she’s really talking about me, to me. “Like you don't wanna deal with it. But running is a huge part of both of our lives,” Rachel tells me. It’s not that I don’t want to deal with it, I just get bored, I tell her. But she says to me, Living Like This Is Her Responsibility. “You don't really have the luxury of just pushing it aside when you want to. We can talk about other things, but at the end of the day, it's nice to be on the same page when it comes to priorities, which is running for both of us…” It’s the first time I've felt a sense of seriousness from her. Cooper agrees. “It's someone to relate to cuz it takes up so much of your day. I've overheard conversations with runners who have girlfriends that aren't in it and they're like, ‘What do you mean? You can't talk right now?’”
Rachel says if she wasn’t a runner and didn't understand the lifestyle, she wouldn’t understand when he tells her he can’t hang out, like oh, gotta go Norma Tech. “I'd be like what?” Or she wouldn’t understand the whole “Three days prior to my race, blah, blah.” The blah blahs are euphemisms for basically doing anything, so that’s why they do nothing. Cooper says they have the luxury of being able to do nothing. That's a huge part of it. Because you just have to recover, huge paht of it. Huge paht? It is a huge part of it. She knows the sport. He knows the sport. They agree it would be difficult to have a relationship because running is this weird little insular community where you have to do all these things that no one else understands.
“What if I was like a Gym Shark girl or something?” Rachel asks Cooper. He says, “I wish.” But then realizes, no, a Gym Shark girl would say, ‘Let's go do something.’ He doesn’t want to go hike around all the time. Cooper and Rachel facilitate each other’s ability to do nothing. She told me they have lives and are really busy and that’s what makes a LDR work, but in reality they do nothing. It's just knowing the lifestyle without having to explain it for someone else.
“We're both catfishes on IG,” Cooper tells me, when I asked them if there was anything that people would be surprised to hear about the two of them. “Someone told me one time that they thought our relationship was fake. A lot of people think it's fake.” The boomer (again) in me says, Woooow, how interesting! But they have pictures with each other on Instagram! He’s quick to remind me it’s not like they don't exist. People say they’re not dating because it's love, it's more like a sham to grow the brand. I wonder what brand he’s referring to, it can’t be Nike or UofO or Colorado or New Gen and realize it’s not any brand other than his own personal brand. I feel dumb. I imagine him saying “grow the brand” in slow motion when I think about this conversation playing back in my head. “GroOoOOoOw tHeEe BraAaNnnNDdddD.” They’re both 10s but niche internet celebs with a Personal Brand.
But I redeem myself, and I’m the one to surprise them. It’s not the first time I’ve seen influencer couples in the NCAA who pretend to date to get more followers. When I bring up a specific example, they’re both shocked at these student-athletes' nerve, or business strategy I guess. “Oh my gosh. What if we did that? We should do that,” Rachel says. Cooper thinks “We'd be sick,” and Rachel is quick to balance out his eagerness by saying, “But no, like I don't actually care at all.” She says they haven't done anything to benefit their social media following. “That's weird to me. People just like it,” Rachel says with pride. And Cooper doesn’t understand why people like them for whatever reason. She’s also stumped on something that's shocking. “Our business is pretty public. I don’t know, I gotta think really hard.” Maybe they are each other’s kryptonite. “We can stew on it,” says Cooper. Rachel agrees. He says they can make up something. “We should make up something…” But they’re not catfishing, remember.
On paper, I’m not compatible with a runner and on paper, they’re not compatible either. But ultimately, I love them. They’re both Leos. (Rachel and I have the same birthday! Barack Obama, Jeff Gordon, Greta Gerwig, now Rachel). Cooper thinks this is sick that he and Rachel are both Leos because they’re fire signs so they aren’t meant to date each other. “Based on the stars, we're not supposed to be together but we beat the odds!” Cooper tells me. Leo's are pretty intense, very confident. We've been told we were cocky. Rachel says, “You think that would result in us feuding, butting heads, but not really.”
They’ve rearranged the stars for each other apparently. She suggests Cooper get a Leo star tattoo that’s unique and it’ll be on her. He thinks it’s funny and then goes back to thinking about what else is cool that they’ve done. “Cool. Have we done anything cool? I don't think people care about where they went. No way.” He dives back into considering his audience and says what he thinks people might say about him and her. “They went to the beach. Oh my God. They're crazy. That's the shit. Yeah!” Cooper thinks the Leos will love it and tells me to put on for the Leos. They keep their people, their followers, me, in mind. Rachel tells me if I need anything else to let her know, because they’re not doing anything. They’re so boring but kind of in an endearing way. I don’t believe they're doing noOoothiiiinG, it doesn’t matter. Whatever they’re doing is guarded from the public eye by a mixture of truth and untruth, a concoction of confusion and clarity, which allows them to have their own form of intimacy and somehow still connect with a lot of people. Fuck it, they are better, I mean faster than most people, and they don’t even do anything. “Ok see ya, we literally are gonna go back to doing nothing,” he says, then hangs up the phone.