After the Glory Days: Christine Impara

In Christine Impara’s senior season, things were finally starting to click for the Oberlin College multi-event athlete.

“At that point, I had been developing as an athlete for four years, and everything was kind of coming together. I was having a really good season; I was excited,” Impara recalled.

At the 2020 Indoor North Coast Athletic Conference Championship, Impara achieved new personal records in three events to break the school record in the pentathlon and place third, setting her team up well ahead of the championship weekend.

“Breaking that record had been a goal of mine for a while, and it was just such a good day,” Impara reminisced. “Sometimes I think about that as the last fully Good Day before a lot of very bad things happened.”

Oberlin’s women's team came in second at the indoor conference championship, a disappointment that left the team eager to train harder than ever in hopes of an outdoor championship comeback. Impara was excited for a final chance to improve in her outdoor events, the heptathlon and 400m hurdles. Then, on March 12th, 2020, the NCAA officially canceled the spring season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People were on their way to nationals, we were excited to watch them compete, and then all of a sudden, we had 72 hours to pack up and leave campus. It was really, really hard.”

Impara suddenly found herself back home in Ashburn, Oregon, three months earlier than she had anticipated. She wasn’t sure what to do with herself. 

“So many questions of identity popped up before I was ready for them. Sure, I was expecting to have to deal with the end of my collegiate athletic career and time as a student. But I thought I had some steps to go before I got to the end of that time,” Impara said. “All of a sudden, all the things that I used to contextualize myself as a person were gone.”

Impara and the rest of Oberlin’s team captains kept in touch via Zoom meetings and phone calls during the spring. She frequently completed time trials and workouts at her old track, but the once-therapeutic realm of running had suddenly lost its shine for Impara without a goal to orient herself. 

“I discovered that I need projects. But at first, my projects were a little bit unhinged. I did an 80-mile week out of nowhere, just to see if I could. Don't try that at home,” Impara joked.

Other projects included an attempt to run up the tallest mountain in her county—no small feat when you live in one of the most mountainous regions in the country. 

“I think it was like 9,000 feet. By the end, I was crawling,” Impara laughed.

Impara moved to New York City later that year to pursue a career as an actress. With time and conversations with former coaches and teammates, she slowly found a way to move on from the abrupt end of her senior year. She realized that the lack of closure—not having a final meet, senior day, or even commencement—was part of why she couldn’t stop mourning what she had lost.

“Having a sense of ceremony helps me to move through those moments, so I tried to create that for myself. I did this whole journal about my experiences and then had a day where I finally closed the book. That was helpful, I think, on some level.”

In the early summer of 2021, a little over a year after the anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown, Impara decided that she wanted to create an event to serve as a final ceremonial farewell to her collegiate career. She wanted something to train for, and she wanted friends and former teammates to be a part of it. But she also wanted to keep it fun. 

“Ultimately, track’s a game. ​​I wanted to find a way to ‘play’ track and make it fun again,” Impara explained.

After mapping out the routes between different tracks in the city, Impara announced her plan: a broken distance medley relay race, with each of the legs taking place on a different track in the city. In between each leg of the relay, Impara and her squad would bicycle to the next location.

Christine started the day with two friends at the Red Hook track in Brooklyn. Another handful of people joined for the 400m leg at John V. Lindsay East River Park track. After cycling across the Williamsburg bridge to McCarren Park, Impara ran the 800m leg with what had grown into a small crowd of participants and spectators. They finished the day after trekking up to the Astoria Park running track in Queens before taking the ferry back home to Brooklyn. Impara says she was thrilled with the turnout of the event.

“I spent so long feeling isolated from my running community because of COVID, which was hard because, before that, it had been a place of connection for me,” Impara explained. “It felt really special to bring together that group of people again. Everyone's sort of scattered to the winds a little bit after college; we're all different people in the real world. It was a rare moment of the team being together again in a context where we all know how to relate to each other, too.”

The event was such a success that Impara hosted another edition in 2022. This time, to cater to other speed disciplines, participants formed sprint medley relay teams that raced at each track, with each team member running a different leg of the relay each time. Another community-minded success, the sprint medley, brought out Oberlin track and field alums from 2012 through 2022.

Adjusting to Life’s New Demands

Between auditions, rehearsals, and working other jobs, Impara has found that running no longer fits into her schedule as easily as it did in college. Her continued prioritization of training has allowed her to successfully compete in the Cleveland and Boston marathons since graduating. Still, Impara notes that she’s made concessions in her mileage and workouts that she might not have as a collegiate athlete.

“If you want to keep training after college, you have to develop an element of forgiveness for yourself. You want to do as much of your workouts as possible, but like, your life also has to happen,” Impara advised.

When Impara was finally ready to toe the line in her first post-collegiate competition on the track, she was surprised at the emotions that rose as she toed the line for an 800m at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island.

“I realized that before this moment, part of why I was competing was for other people—for my team, for my coaches, for the points. I missed that motivation for sure,” Impara explained. “But it was also kind of cool to be like, ‘Wow, I arrived here entirely of my own volition, and I get to do it for me today.’”

For others struggling to figure out how track and field fits into their life after graduation, Impara suggests reflecting on their relationship with the sport and how it may need to shift to meet the demands of adult life. 

“​​If you want to compete or just keep running after college, you get to decide what that looks like now. One of my friends and teammates was talking to me about how your relationships with others will shift in and out of priority throughout your life,” Impara said. “And that’s okay. You don’t always need to mourn a shift as if it’s a loss. Sometimes it just means you’re relating differently than you did before.”

Impara never got to have the senior season of her dreams, but she’s proven that a love for track and field doesn’t have to end when one’s collegiate career does. She not only managed to find a balance for the sport in her new life but created opportunities for connection and play that brought her community along with her. Stay tuned for more details on what medley relay might be coming to the NYC boroughs next year.