William Lawrence Camp shaped my life more than I knew.
Growing up, I went to William Lawrence Camp – an all-boys sleepaway camp in Center Tuftonboro, New Hampshire – for nine consecutive years. I spent five years as a camper and then four years as a staff member (You receive special recognition for 10 years at WLC, so I am a bit bummed that I never got to become a Bill Larry Man. I will forever be a Bill Larry Boy).
Ever since my first summer, I fell in love with the General Store Run.
It was a four-mile race in which every camper and staff member would participate on the last Friday morning of four-week increment. Juniors and their counselors would start first, followed by middlers and their counselors, bookended by seniors and their counselors.
Every other camper and staff member would complain about having to do it, but not I. That, along with the annual trip to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats or the Portland Sea Dogs, was the highlight of the summer to me and I could not wait to toe that start line drawn in the dirt.
The more I look back at it now, the more I realize how much the General Store Run at William Lawrence Camp fostered my love of running. You could give it as much – or as little – effort as you wanted and I always gave it my all, because there was just something about it!
I always remembered the run to be challenging, though. It was downhill on the way out and uphill on the way back. They did not call the final hill next to camp “Heartbreak Hill” for nothing (You can see how this was a very New England camp, naming it after the Boston Marathon).
The other day I plugged the route into some mapping software to see just how tough it was, based on an elevation profile. As it turns out, it was pretty difficult, dropping from a highest point of 1081 feet to 712 feet over two miles and climbing the reverse back.
No wonder why all of us would be exhausted after we finished!
