Our destiny is to run to the edge of the world and beyond, off into the darkness. – Thomas Aquinas
THE FRONT RUNNER…
You yawn.
You always yawn before a race. Every race, but you yawn a little longer and a little yawnier before this race, today’s race.
Can’t help but notice the breeze. The trees bold with autumn, bold with the colors of change.
You jog to loosen up, break a sweat. You feel especially good or maybe kinda putrid, but you can’t really tell for sure. You do some pick-ups, short sprints building slowly in speed. Try not to run into anybody. Controlled accelerations. Like pulling away from a stoplight.
Whoaaaa. You feel springy, light on your feet, up on your toes, so light it’s a secret you can’t wait to share. You tell no one.
You make absolutely certain your shoes are tied tight. You make absolutely certain twice. You look serious when someone calls your name. You have no idea who the hell is calling, yet you wave in that direction anyway. You think you may have to pee again, but there’s no time, and you understand it’s just your nerves.
Inspect the knots in your laces.
You strip off your sweats and check again to make sure your number is still pinned on. Wonder what you overlooked.
You are always relieved to see you remembered your shorts.
You shake hands all around, sincerely, and notice the starter looks like a huge penguin. You mumble greetings. Hear nothing.
Not even the gun. You do not have time to think. You react and suddenly you are elbows and jostling and bump and then right in the middle of it. Go!!
Settle down. You tell yourself that – settle down – but it’s hard. You are running so fast just to keep up.
They say each race has a life of its own. They say you can live an entire life in a single race.
The first lap, you are a child, full of energy and hope. Ready for anything, open to anything. You have much to look forward to. You know all you have to do is keep moving and stay out of trouble and your time will come. Just as surely as the morning sun. When you are a child, you are growing bigger and stronger and smarter and faster all the time. The first lap is play.
Second lap, you are still strong but beginning to experience doubts. Tiny doubts. You shake them off. More decisions come your way and they come faster and some you understand right away and others seem more complex but it is early. The second lap is a time for study.
The third time around, you know the middle ages can be the darkest time. The pace quickens and the flesh is weak, here little news about your body is ever good news. You have to dig deep within yourself and you are more often concerned what you will find. You learn to hang tough. And the value of hard work.
The last lap, all she wrote. All that has gone before matters not, but what you’ve got at the end is all that counts. And how you will be remembered is the only question left unanswered. The finish line becomes a matter of life and death. Your final time an epitaph. Clock stops.
So, in the early running, you look around you and recognize some familiar faces. The other runners are like playmates, together you are out to have a good time. You are a big fan of your own sport and you secretly doubt your own ability to compete with the best. Too late to worry.
You are not a worrier. You cover every move, as pale pretenders trail away like trash fluttering off the bed of a pickup truck. As meaningless as litter. You learned long ago, playing in the streets, not to get cornered. A voice tells you to get free.
You stay focused. Hold back.
You want to bolt too soon, everybody knows you are impatient. It is your nature, they say. You see yourself the opportunist and, when an opening appears as if a miraculous mirage, you do not question, and fill the empty space boldly, assuredly. Let them worry about you.
Relax, you tell yourself. Suddenly, your leg stings. Feel the blood trickle down your calf from a nasty spike wound. You are a warrior. You could get tired but you decide to get mad instead. Get even. The other runners no longer allies. You must flee from them, get away. Get away.
Get free. Must get free.
First sign of weakness, you go and you go hard and you keep going until you think you can’t, your body screams to slow down, lungs screaming, oxygen gone, you can’t maintain the surge but you do and then you keep going because right here you can win the race, steal away.
Put it in your pocket like a shoplifter.
You never know what you can do until you try. Let then try to catch you, see what good it does them.
You are away. Wind stiffer than you thought. Everybody can see you now, exposed. Everybody out to get you.
You are not the kind of guy who takes a lead for granted. Truth is, you cannot remember a lead like this before, not so early. Well, might’ve been one lead this big once, you can’t remember.
This is not a big lead anyway, a gap maybe. Other people might think it’s a big lead, may look like a big lead to some but it doesn’t feel big to you. Feels like a stride, a couple strides at most. Feels good though. Very good. Sneaky good like illicit sex. Good enough to hold on to, clutch close to your chest.
Too good to be true.
The chase is a rush, you are high on flight.
You are not a worrier. Stay free, they might be getting closer.
You begin to get worried, start to imagine, so real, there’s someone behind you. He’s gaining, you can hear his stealthy footsteps getting closer. Sneaky. A faint whisper first. Like bones clicking far off. Getting louder.
You can actually hear imaginary footsteps. Stay free.
You wonder, maybe a prodigious kicker was sitting back there all the time, just waiting to pounce. Bullies. Damn predators.
Closer. Don’t look back. Can’t look back. Don’t. Can’t. Their kind always takes heart, if they see you glance around, telegraph a sign of fear. You wonder if you can be scared of the sound of another man’s footsteps and you know the answer.
But you are a warrior, so you go faster. You know why they are chasing you. You know you are going faster, you can feel yourself going faster. It hurts. Footsteps. Can you hear them? Whose are they? Does it matter? Maybe there are two chasers, working together. Maybe a whole pack. Ganging up on you. Waiting to devour you like wolves after a deer.
You are alone. You look for shadows. Maybe the slightest peek on the next turn, out of the corner of your eyes. Those bastards.
All the beers you didn’t drink. All those early bedtimes. Must not be in vain.
You own this lead – it’s yours. They want it; don’t let them have it. They want to finish ahead of you. Must not let them. You are going as fast as you can, you can’t go any faster, you must go faster.
Must go faster.
Not much longer. Dread drives you like an outboard motor up your butt. You remember all the mornings you wanted to sleep in, just roll over and doze off, but you couldn’t. Cold mornings, wet mornings, dark mornings.
Go faster. If they catch you now, you might let them get past, so you must not be caught. You would probably give up.
The damn finish line, never where you hope. Always more distant. Dark, wet, cold mornings. No, you wouldn’t give up. Not you.
You figure the best way to keep the other guy from winning is to win the race yourself. You don’t give up.
You never give up.
They will have to catch you first.
THE KICKER…
You are late.
You are often late, so you are always in a rush. You like your rest.
You oversleep, doze right through the clanging of the alarm. Grab a couple of fistfuls of breakfast cereal as you pass through the kitchen, put a banana in your pocket, blow by your family, blow a kiss and a wave over your shoulder and bolt out the house. The door always slamming with a bang behind you.
You miss the bus.
Wait.
You don’t like racing against the clock. Ask your grandparents who is going to win that race. Your mom once quipped you’d be late for your own funeral and you thought that sounded like a good idea. Always trying to play catch up. You like the challenge.
Fast enough to catch the bus.
Timing is key. The problem you learned long ago: tardiness is not so much about when you arrive, but about how soon you get started. Begin early enough, the endings most always take care of themselves.
You often wait too late.
So, you catch a ride with friends. A friend is anybody who will give you a ride. Missed the bus one time when you were little and ran all the way to school. There was a test you couldn’t afford to fail.
Liked running. Liked the way it felt, the way you could feel your body flow. You are fast.
Having trouble getting your foot out of your warm-ups.
Liked running to school. Sometimes you ran home. Sometimes you beat the bus. And everybody on it. Learned all the shortcuts to school. But sometimes you found yourself taking the long way home.
You make the decision what route to take, when to leave and how fast to get there. Your running is all about freedom. Made you an individual, it did. Special. You are not on anybody else’s schedule, you can leave when you want. No parking problems when you travel by foot. Your legs can take you wherever you want to go.
You ignore Walk/Don’t Walk signs.
You have plenty of time. Wait.
When you are in a race, there is no past, there is no future. You are not as confident as you pretend to be. You have no doubts.
Having trouble getting psyched up for this.
You could have been a nifty wide receiver with your speed. But you hated to get hit. Really, what’s the point? A race is like football without the tackling. A boxing match is more like it. A holds-barred free-for-all at first, usually a duel at the end. Punching each other with the pace, punching and counter-punching. Mano a mano. Until just one of you is left standing. Wait.
You are a counter-puncher. Have to be patient. Turn the other cheek. Takes discipline, takes a brave man not to strike back. Not until he’s ready. You will strike. You will.
No time for stretching.
When you start the race, you don’t always get into it straight away. You are just along for the ride. To tell the truth, you don’t even think about competing much until the time’s right. Until absolutely necessary.
Tie a rope with your mind around the waist of the pacesetter and pull tight. Focus your eyes on the middle of his shoulder blades and lock on.
His ass is yours. Lose me if you can, you tell him. And you never forget to always remember not to lose sight of the guy you are chasing. Wait.
One time you were actually back in the locker room, taking a dump, when the gun went off. Almost won that race. Would’ve, too, but you slipped coming around a wet corner.
You react. Cover every move, a blanket on any aspirations of escape. Keep that rope taut. Sometimes you can lead the race from behind. Just keep the pressure on.
Not even paying any special attention, but missing nothing, just something you sense, but you know other runners are dropping off the back of the pack like sparks flying from a camp fire. You can change gears at will. Wait.
You just run. Sweat a primal sheen. Your body sends signals, complicated reports from your cardiovascular system, your organs distant planets throughout your torso. Joints the outliers. Monitor the signals, listen to your body and all you hear is…nothing hurts yet. Wait.
Floating. Feel like a fresh foal. Recall the advice of that beautiful young boxer Mohammad Ali: float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Imagine yourself as different creatures. Fly like an eagle, spring like a bear. Disassociation maybe.
Some think you are a Lamprey eel. Attached to the shark. Sucking scraps.
A parasite perhaps. That’s okay… you are not here to make friends.
Holding back. You are a cheetah poised to pounce. Wait.
Check that rope. Make sure it’s still stiff tight. He can run but he can’t hide. You are the predator, he is the prey. Part of the food chain. Wait. A race is a game of tag between the armed and the unarmed, the way you look at it, and you are the hunter.
Sometimes you feel like you are a villain, the cowboy in the black hat. It’s a gunfight for sure, but some people call you a bushwhacker. Bushwacker is a funny word, you think. Like there’s a right and a wrong way to race. An honest way to finish first or a more cowardly method.
Doesn’t matter. You like the idea of trying to take something away from somebody who is trying to take something away from you.
Plan the race, race the plan. It’s no secret what you are going to do. You are your kick. For some reason – blame your parents – you refuse to move any faster than absolutely necessary. Saving energy. What’s the hurry? Wait.
You actually hate waiting. But nothing else makes as much sense. Only one man in the world can stay ahead of all the rest of us. And you fairly sure he’s not in this race. He’s the only real front runner. Everybody else is merely the guy in the lead for now. They never give a prize to who’s ahead in the middle. Seems to you a front runner must believe he is clearly superior to his competitors. Or he believes himself somehow inferior. You don’t care.
Sure, a race is run over the entire distance, not simply the final furlong. Whatever a furlong is. You are willing to run as fast as anybody else. As fast as it takes. He is free to run so fast you can’t keep up. Good luck. How fast would that be?, you wonder. You don’t want to know. The proof is in the sprinting. Fast is as fast does. Wait.
Times are meaningless. No true measure of greatness. High school boys today clock better times than Little Mary Decker Slaney, but they are not greater runners. Guys you never heard of pushing the late-great-never-to-be-forgotten Steve Prefontaine down the all-time rankings. Like kicking sand in Mt. Rushmore’s faces.
On the edge of oxygen debt, you remember something an old hippy told you once. Or maybe it was something Don Kardong said. He said, time is not linear in a front to back sense. Rather time is a depth measured from top to bottom. Today is not ahead of yesterday, but below tomorrow. The now is just a pebble dropped into the fathoms of the infinite forever. Life is the ripples which wreak havoc in ever widening circles. We don’t get older, we get deeper. Which explains that sinking feeling you have.
Something like that.
Holding on. You don’t chase statistics. You race people, not clocks, and this guy is strong. Real strong.
Sneak a peek. Looks strong, too. Clipping off the miles like a metronome. Tick. Tick. Tick.
He knows he must get away. But you still have him in your sights, there’s a little red dot on his back. Run right through the pain. Ignore it. You blame him. He could slow down and make the pain go away. Starting to piss you off. Bet he doesn’t know yet he can’t possibly break loose. Idiot.
Hope you have something left. Wait. All you can do to keep up. You don’t particularly enjoy pain. Simply makes sense, pain should be endured as briefly as possible. Why ask for it? Pain is not the point.
Time, like money, is how you keep score when there is no other way to pick a winner. Speed, the great equalizer, is the only currency on the track. Victory is priceless. Wait.
When it hurts, you know you will have to make it hurt more. That extra gear of yours is in a very dark place far away. And when you have to dig deep down inside yourself, you hope to find what you want, what you need. Don’t want to think about it. Wait. Just the two of you now. The pain. Bastard surged again. Stop that! Hold on. Don’t let him break the rope. Hold on. Wait.
Wonder if it’s worth it. Why not just let him go? You have all the trophies you’ll ever need. No. One thing you cannot do, not now, is lose your concentration. Focus. Wait.
Stay close. Damn, he’s tough. Almost time. Wait. Almost time to make your move.
Now.
Excerpt from When Running Was Young And So Were We.
As is my style, I managed to be a slow front runner, so actual opportunities were limited.
But through years of hard work and mania, I became The World’s Slowest Professional Runner.
Faster than all the “normal people” if I had a good day.
A couple of times, if the turns were right, I found myself alone – the tip of the spear – chased by dozens, maybe even hundreds, of joggers. Who would never catch me.
And it felt good.