Incident on Boylston Street

            As the third Monday in April approaches, memories always return.

            Amy Dodson and I trundle off to the packet pickup and expo in the Hymes Convention Center around the corner from my hotel. This run is a celebration for Amy. The previous year, 2001, she became the first woman leg amputee to ever run the Boston Marathon.

            We pickup our timing chips, number bib, Boston Marathon tee shirt—a prize for any runner, yellow this year—and a bag of free junk. Then we head into the expo section looking to buy more junk—souvenirs and running stuff. It’s all part of the Boston experience.

            Finally we head off in search of lunch, but first Amy wants to find a grocery store where she can buy some breakfast snacks. I know where one is, half a block away on Boylston, toward the very finish line we’ll both ache for tomorrow.

            A disquieting thing happens as Amy and I enter the grocery store. A young woman with the facial features typical of Down’s syndrome suddenly runs past us out of the store, crying loudly. We stop in some dismay and watch from just inside the store as she flops on a bench facing the crowded walk, still wailing. An elderly black woman stands beside me looking on, wearing a kindly expression of pity.

            “What happened, do you know?” I ask the woman.

            “Naaww,” she says with a soft drawl, like she might have come from the South.   

            “I wonder what it was. I wonder if we can do anything.” We stand there in bafflement and indecision, looking through the store window at the unfortunate woman bawling on the bench.

            “Maybe we can find out,” I say. The old woman and I both turn at the same time and head back outside. She wants to help, too.

            I ask the crying woman if she can tell us what is wrong. The old woman pats her shoulder and talks to her softly. We can’t understand what she is saying. Between sobs we hear something about money—that they had her money? Or wouldn’t give her her money?—we aren’t sure. The woman appears to have a mental disability, but, then, she is here by herself.

            “Let’s go inside and talk to them,” I say. “Maybe we can help you.” We all turn and go back inside the store and find a clerk at the front.

            “This woman has a problem with money—she lost her money or something inside the store,” I say to the clerk—and then to the young woman: “Why don’t you tell the gentleman what happened.” She starts again, her sobs quieter now, talking about “it wouldn’t give her any money.” I think maybe she’s been short-changed or someone took her money. We still don’t understand.

            Trying to tell it again, she points at the ATM. It wouldn’t give her any money, she tells us.

            Now I know.

            “Do you have a card?” I ask. She shakes her head no.

            “You can’t get money out of an ATM unless you have a card,” I say.

            Where can you get a card, she wants to know.

            “You have to go to the bank to get a card,” I say.

            “But the bank is closed,” she says, bleakly. She is correct; today is Sunday. There are no possibilities at all today.

            “Do you need some money to buy something to eat?” I ask.

             “Uh-huh,” she says, nodding.

            I open my wallet and hand her a twenty, expecting her to head to the shelves for food. Instead, she suddenly goes outside again and disappears in the crowd, clutching the twenty-dollar bill in her hand before her.

            Some alert thug probably took it from her before she went a block.

            Amy stands by patiently watching this entire episode. As a former New Yorker, she has a hardened feel for the street. I vaguely wonder if she thinks I’m a dope or a Good Samaritan. She may think I should mind my own business, not go involving myself with strangers, unfortunate or not.

            And I had misgivings, too. I hope Amy is pleased with my attempt at kindness. I suspect that’s the case, for she is a generous soul herself. But I don’t ask her how she feels about it. We quickly dismiss the unpleasant incident, the unlucky woman, chase it from our heads and go on. We’re here to run a race, not cover ourselves in sackcloth and ashes.

            But I still remember the incident vividly—and the pity shown by the old black woman, who, as they say, didn’t have a dog in the fight.

Cummins Falls Marathon - Astonishing!

Marathon and half marathoners gather at the starting line while Cummins Falls murmurs nearby. Photo of runners by Tom Glynn.

            Despite my urging Josh Hite didn’t decide to run the inaugural Cummins Falls Marathon until late the day before the race. Then he sent me a text:

“Chances are that I will run a marathon tomorrow.”

           

             And so he did.

            Good thing, too—he won, finishing in a time of 3:13:56. That’s not likely a time that will impress anyone who was not there. The course is challenging, bringing an insane climb at mile 17, and Josh had been undecided because of a recent bout with the flu followed by an injury from a fall on an icy patch. The injury healed just in time.

            A gray sky, 40 degrees, and calm winds greeted the 197 runners assembled at Cummins Falls on Saturday, February 23. Runners spread across four races held that morning—a marathon, half marathon, 10K, and 5K. Twenty eight had registered for the marathon. They knew what they faced. The course map and profile had been posted on the race’s Facebook page, here:
http://www.runningahead.com/maps/a0e701fd73ed4927 a57517a8f432ffa0?unit=mi

“One big downer, one big upper, and eight miles of routine hell to pay...”

           Half marathoners and marathoners started and ran together for the first five miles, until the former split left on Perry Smith Road. Just 1.5 miles into the run we plunged into the gorge carved by the Blackburn Fork State Scenic River, the stream that makes Cummins Falls. We ran alongside that river until it joined Roaring River—also a State Scenic River—followed it for two miles and then turned up Morrison’s Creek, which drains another narrow valley. At the head of that valley, the course demanded payback. A crushing climb called Chaffin Hill at mile 17 delivered marathoners back to the plateau on which they’d started, and to which they were bound to return.

            For eight miles after that, the route followed a roller coaster along a ridge known as Seven Knobs. Suffering runners will tell you that Seven Knobs has at least a dozen knobs. Other roads followed, bringing more dips and climbs. The last eight miles, on legs already wasted by Chaffin Hill, were bitterly hard. The course profile looks like a mountain turned upside down.

            Put in geologic terms, runners started on the Highland Rim, descended into the Nashville Basin and climbed back out again, a traverse encompassing millions of years in geologic time. But runners measure time in seconds.

“…I trailed by 30 sec until 17. Then Hite crushed me.”  - @thunderruns

            Andrew Holbrook, a friend of Josh and mine, also ran the marathon. Andrew grew up in Cookeville but now operates a running store in Roanoke, Virginia. His Twitter handle is @thunderruns. Since they are the same age, 35, and both accomplished runners, I expected Josh and Andrew to have a competitive race. That was true for 11 miles. At that time Josh pulled ahead by 30 seconds. Then, for Andrew, the crux came in the hard climb in mile 17, as he tweeted me above. Andrew ended by finishing in third place, with a time of 3:28:24.

            Third place for Andrew, because Franklin Baker, 33, of Cincinnati, Ohio ran a spirited race. Franklin, the son of well-known mid-state runner Bill Baker, was able to finish in a time of 3:15:39, taking second place.

Virginia marathoner Andrew Holbrook runs to a third-place finish. Photo by Bombdog Hamilton.

            On the women’s side, Donna Dworak, 48, took first place honors in a time of 4:38:11. Karen Austin, 60, of Nashville finished second, with 4:51:19. Altogether, 23 runners managed to complete the marathon.

“Hold me and make it stop!”

            For myself, the oldest runner there at age 72, I managed to trudge across the finish line after precisely four hours, one minute and 52 seconds, to finish in eighth place overall, first place for runners over 60.

            While half marathoners and marathoners were out on their courses, 10K and 5K races were held.  Men and women winners of the half, 10K and 5K were:

            Half Marathon (45 finishers). Brian Shelton, 34, 1:20:59; Ginny Bond, 31, 1:46:02

            10K (48 finishers). J. D. Pollard, 27, 49:29; Erin Rainer, 27, 49:39

            5K (64 finishers). Tracy Yoder, 49, 20:06; Anne Sharpe, 33, 22:35

Cookeville runners Jennifer Hackbarth Parks and Gabriel Gitan help Jennifer Scarlett, center, up a hill. Photo by Bombdog Hamilton.

“Where the scenery is hardcore and the course is hardrun.”

            Despite the vast differences in our ages, overall-winner Josh Hite and I are running partners. I’m sure he runs a little slower when he runs with me, while I run a little faster. Nonetheless, somehow it works. One of our favorite things is to make what we call adventure runs in Jackson County, following loops across the hills, ridges and hollows. Hills like Chaffin Hill are hardly new to us. Indeed, we’d run most of the course for this marathon before Cummins Falls Park existed, before the idea for this marathon was born. 

Pastoral scenes greeted runners all along the course, this one on Blackburn Fork. Photo by Cyrus Rhode.

            One impromptu run took us down Blackburn Fork just nine days after the historic flood of August, 2010. That flood evinced power we’d never seen. A TTU geology professor later researched the flood. Among his findings: its magnitude fell in the range of a 500-1,000-year flood. It is thus likely such a flood has never occurred on the stream since Europeans settled in North America.

            Our run that day was in a landscape Saturday’s marathoners would scarcely have recognized. We climbed through house-sized piles of uprooted trees, waded the river, and ran where a road only used to be. The experience so enthralled it became the ultimate chapter in my 2011 book, Going Down Slow.

Marathoners ran beside the river and bluffs. Photo by cummins Falls State Park.

            The road has now been repaired beyond its original condition. Two bridges on side roads have not been rebuilt, but the main bridge at Zion Road has been replaced by a higher, longer bridge. 

            The Blackburn Fork landscape remains rustic, still one of my favorite places. Many of Saturday’s runners commented on the course’s outstanding scenic beauty.

            A note on Jackson County. Cummins Falls lies only a routine run from where I sit in my home in Cookeville, county seat of Putnam County. Although near Cookeville, Cummins Falls State Park and the marathon course lie entirely in Jackson County, one of the state’s more pastorally rural and sparsely populated counties. It was that county marathoners saw.

            And they saw it as few outsiders ever have. But not just outsiders, it’s likely that even most people who live in Jackson County have never seen Morrison’s Creek. The marathoners saw it intimately. They saw Chaffin Hill, and they’ll never forget it. Seven Knobs, they’ll never forget. They will tell amazed stories to running friends back home. Those runners will come to run next year, and the next.

           Alex Forest, Maine, on Facebook: “I’ll never forget that hill nor will I ever complain about hills again! Thank you for a wonderful day, awesome hospitality, and a memorable experience.”

            @Karenruns, Twitter: “4:51 bitch of a course, 2nd female overall.”

            Danny Staggs, Facebook: “Beautiful course!”

            Bill Baker, Facebook: “Wow,The toughest half course I remember running—ever…”

“Thank you all for a great job. It was SO hard but beautiful,” Karen Austin, Facebook

            Runners were unanimous in their thanks and praise of rangers and volunteers. It takes a large body of helpers. Race Director Ray Cutcher brought together an outstanding team.

            Often a lone marathoner ran into an aid station where from five to a dozen volunteers waited to offer water, sports drinks, food, anything needed. I felt guilty for having so much help. And I never saw so many rangers in one area, sitting with blue lights flashing for traffic control, or pointing runners in the right direction at remote intersections. Other state parks must have been short-handed of rangers that day.

            Friends of Cummins Falls State Park sponsored the race in an effort to improve the park and eventually buy enough land to protect the view shed. An immediate concern is to protect the park’s hemlock trees from the woolly adelgid. That insect has already killed many hemlocks in the Smokies. Spraying works. “The spray lasts for three years,” Friends member Jim Whitaker told me. In that time natural protection may be found in the form of an insect that preys on the woolly adelgid.

Unique age-group and finishers’ medallions were made of laser-cut wood.

            The Friends outdid themselves. The success of this year’s race establishes a base from which future editions will grow. Finisher Cyrus Rhode, on Facebook:  “I would dare say that this could be the signature marathon for the great State of Tennessee.”     

            From the whole spectrum of big-time races, little-time races and those in between, I’ve never seen post-race food like Ruby Tuesdays brought to Cummins Falls. They spread a full cafeteria—even including that Southern favorite, sweet iced tea. Ruby Tuesdays deserves recognition for their outstanding contribution.

            And if I were in the market for a kayak, I’d give Jackson Kayak of Sparta, Tennessee my business. I’ve never seen such a generous door prize as the one they donated, a 14-foot kayak with MSRP of $1299.

           

“Double proud.”

            For myself, I’m proud my running partner Josh Hite took first overall. Since I won about all I could expect to win, one has to say we did okay. Mutt and Jeff, in terms of speed, but we do, after all, go out and run those hills. It pays off, and the boys did alright. I’m putting it down as a good day. I hope to be there again next year.

The Best Marathon in the World

            Marathoners were streaming into the west side of the stadium. They would run a partial lap around the track before ending their 26.2-mile journey at the finish line I’d just crossed.

            I wanted to have one last look. I glanced back down the track at the finish line fifty yards behind me, up at the expectant faces looking down from the stands. The people in those stands in 1912 had watched Jim Thorpe win two Olympic gold medals—later stripped from him for having played two seasons of semi-professional baseball. The decision was controversial and the medals were restored after his death.

            I turned to walk through the archway. On the wall high above, a staff held out the Swedish colors, a yellow cross on a sky-blue background. The flag whipped and snapped in the wind.

            I ambled through the archway, clutching my plastic blanket and finisher’s medal. On this June day the Stockholm Marathon had for me already become history, my 3:26:44 finish converted to mere blips on a computer disk. I was dismayed at what had happened. Once again the awful distance had declared its mystery, sprung its trap.

            My legs hurt.

            I walked a short ways to a soccer field and stopped in front of a blue-eyed blond girl, exemplar of Scandinavian beauty. She looked up and, noticing the tiny American flag printed on the corner of my bib, spoke in perfect idiom:

            “Did you run good?”

            “I did the best I could.”

            “That’s the best!”

            Then she went to work with her knife, reclaiming the timing chip.

            Legs aching, I walked on to a table stacked with T-shirts marked “L.” They might be too big, I thought. Standing there was a square-jawed blond boy—another stereotype.

            “How large are they?”

            “They’re large. Americans are so very large.”

            “Not this one.”

            He had noticed my nationality too. We were a tiny minority. Among 16,000 runners from fifty-four countries, only 180 were Americans. I slung the shirt over my shoulder. Too big or not, it didn’t much matter.

            Among thousands of recovering finishers I found a vacant spot of grass, spread my plastic blanket, and stretched out, although I knew what would happen: I wouldn’t be able to get back up. My legs were twitching and jerking, electricity darting like Saint Elmo’s fire. I lay very still, hoping against a cramp. I’d done the best I could. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

            With a good run I had a chance for a trophy, I’d thought. But today there’d be no trophy. The Ultimate Guide to International Marathons picked this marathon as the best marathon in the world—in arguably the most beautiful city in the world. That brings out world-class runners.

            Now as I lay in the grass, a rock band behind me was in full flight, playing a Bob Seger tune. When the singer came across the words “running against the wind,” I suddenly started sobbing. I stopped quickly, ashamed.

            Why did my run go so badly here on this beautiful, flat course? I wondered. I didn’t want to wreck again. My plan had been to run each 5K segment at 22:30. That would bring me to the finish in 3:09:53—not over-reaching, within my capability, I thought. At the first 5K marker I pushed the button on my Timex and saw frozen there precisely the numbers I wanted—22:30. I had nailed it.

            Despite that, news was not good. Instead of the expected pulse rate—141 beats—my heart monitor had been pushing 150, foretelling trouble. My system was under stress, probably from all the sleep lost in the four days prior to the race. Over three of those days I’d had a total of six hours of sleep. A night of sleep lost on the overnight flight, and subsequent jet lag had blasted my body rhythm.

            The next 5K took forty-six seconds too long, the next one eighty-five seconds, and so on. My time goal slipped away, and there was nothing I could do about it. It became a matter of playing out my string. At the halfway point the darts of electricity started in my feet and legs—hard cramps were coming soon, I knew.

            They started around 30K. Crippling cramps seized my feet, calves and hamstrings in mid-stride so suddenly and so hard I’d nearly smack the pavement. “Relax, take it easy!” I whispered to those muscles. I slowed to a jog.

            I felt lucky to make it to the finish line. Races that go bust are the ones taking the greatest courage. I did the best I could. Marathons are unpredictable.

            My time ranked me twelfth among the 446 finishers in my division, I would learn. I needed my best game, but brought my worst one.

            Now I lay trying to recover, looking up at a Stockholm sky of the purest blue—I understund why the Swedish flag is sky blue. Fleecy clouds were running fast from the south. A nearby oak tree stretched its leaves out. An occasional gull sailed over, eyeing this festival of pain.

            My T-shirt lay wadded on my chest, weighted by the medal. A marathoner walked by, looked down and smiled. He said something but not in English. I just smiled. The kindness of strangers!—it stabs me with sudden joy. I started sobbing again.

            Is it that simple?—a stranger’s smile, a sudden joy. Why do people run marathons?           

            That night after the marathon, French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery offered an answer. Despite exhaustion, I still couldn’t sleep. My legs were twitching and jerking. At 3:00 a.m., daylight peeped through the drapes. I gave up on sleep and pulled out Wind, Sand and Stars, a beautiful book I’d been rereading. On the second page I read I found: “Everything about mankind is paradox.” Then Saint-Exupery linked joy to misery: “...a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us...a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remember even the misery with tenderness.”

            There is ample misery in a marathon. Runners remember it with tenderness, tell stories about it. They treasure that intense moment; it’s part of their truth, like soil is part of a farmer’s truth. But there is also the simple smile of a stranger. They remember that, too, and treasure that, too. I do.

            But lying in the grass now after the race I wasn’t wondering why; I was wondering how to get up. I watched as the fleecy clouds thickened and finally blotted out the blue sky. Day turned gray. The temperature fell; I got cold.

            I managed to gain a sitting position. But when I bent my knee to gather my feet, the calf muscle jerked into a hard knot. I slammed the leg straight and lay back grimancing. Finally it eased. I tried again. And again. Each time cramps shot an arrow through my calf. Getting up took several minutes. But I finally found myself standing again.

            Since I was cold, I put on the T-shirt. Then I wrapped the plastic sheet around my legs and tied it, forming a sarong. That screened the wind.

            After a hot dog and beer I headed toward the hotel, walking down a street called Sturegatan. A surging river of runners still flowed the other way, heading toward the stadium. They’d been running an hour longer than I ran. After such a long time, they had the finish line near now, and nothing could stop them. They would cross the line. Each one knew that, each face told you. What could they gain there? And why were they so willing to suffer so much to reach it? I couldn’t answer. Their long-suffering seemed to embody the whole world’s suffering, and I could only watch in unknowing pity and wonder.

            A strange thing had happened on this street. I walked along it to the pasta supper the night before the race, gazing at the buildings. A gray flag hung from a pole mounted on the wall between two windows on the second story. The flag contained in big letters a single word: “Dallas.” My name, my name waving bravely in the wind! The name of a Swedish company maybe. I didn’t know, but it was the last thing I expected to see. A good omen, I thought.

            The next day on my way to the race I walked along Sturegatan again, watching for the flag, my race talisman. But what I saw was bleak. The wind had snarled the flag in a wad around the pole; my name lay trapped in a crumpled heap. Overnight the lucky omen had turned to a gloomy one. My spirit sank.

            Now, my race over, I walked along that street again. The flag had been right. I watched for it one last time. But I knew what I’d see. The flag was still tangled just like before. It had kept its promise.

            From the mass of passing runners someone suddenly yelled, “Dallas!” I looked over to see Keith Lewis, a Californian I’d met three days earlier. He swerved to the curb to slap hands. “Go man!” I yelled.

            He was about to finish his 100th marathon. No stranger to this city; he had visited here in 1995 when his father won the Nobel Prize for his research in genetics. Keith carries on that work. Their research shows how, at the genetic level, humans are very similar to all other life, even plants, he’d told me.

            The unity of life is perhaps a hopeful notion, if frightening.

            Keith melted back into the stream. Against all conceivable odds, my name had been heralded twice on this singular street in this foreign place—once from a desultory flag, once more from the scientist son of a Nobel Laureate.

            My head was awhirl. I’d seen majesty: Today’s run had taken me through the hunting garden of ancient kings, across the Baltic Sea, by the walls of medieval buildings and across lake water pure enough to drink. And I’d see mystery: A marathoner running nude but for a bra, jock strap and head band, a blood-like smear on his right thigh. And so on.

            These events swirl around the marathon like so much turbulent fog. Despite all the tumult, at its canonical heart the story remains the same: a primal struggle against 26.2 implacable miles. It will always be so.

            I drifted on down Sturegatan, a shabby spectacle in a plastic skirt, amazed at it all.

Prologue: Daddy's Blue Shoes

            You won’t catch me rhapsodizing about running. You may not even ever hear me say I like it. I’m not sure I do. It’s severe and it trades in misery. It’s the price I pay for living. It’s just what I do. I reckon I’ll keep it up until they scatter my ashes. My super-heated molecules will mix with the air, become part of it and circle the globe. You might run down the road and breathe a bit of me. It may give you strength.

            Runners say the difference in a jogger and a runner is an entry form; a runner competes in races. By that definition, I became a runner in April of 1998 at the age of fifty-seven, after being a jogger for eighteen years, where I routinely logged six miles a day. I didn’t know why I did that. I had the vague idea it was good for me somehow. After writing two books about running, I still don’t know why I do it.

            The first race I ran I wore my deceased father’s shoes. I signed up secretly. The night before the race, a local 10K starting at Tennessee Tech, I told wife Jo Ann,

            “I’m getting’ up early in the morning and going to the campus to go running.”

            “Why?” She knew I hated getting up early.

            “Cause I want to.”

            The shoes I wore I’d originally bought for my dad. He wore the same size I did. I’d bought myself a pair and got an extra pair for him. He wasn’t a runner. He was an old man dying from lung disease. He’d spent a lifetime operating bulldozers in dust, welding dangerous metals, and smoking unfiltered Camel cigarettes. I used to smoke them too.

            He wasn’t able to do much except drive his pickup truck and sit around the house. The slightest exertion made him purse his lips and breathe hard. He took oxygen from a tank. So he didn’t need the shoes for running. Soft and pliable as they were, I thought they’d be comfortable for him to loaf in. The shoes were eye-catching because they were navy blue, trimmed in white, unusual in those days; most running shoes were white then.

            A thug soon stole my blue shoes. It was during one of the family’s desperate attempts to get treatment for Daddy at Nashville’s Baptist Hospital, seventy miles from his home, eighty from mine. Family members took turns staying in the hospital to help out and keep Momma company. I slept on the waiting room floor in my sleeping bag one night. We knew crooks roamed the halls. Some other visitors and I arranged the furniture into a fortress. I was exhausted from teaching at the university and spending nights at the hospital. I set my shoes under a coffee table at my head and went to sleep. Next morning the blue shoes were gone.

            A few weeks after Daddy died, Momma gave his blue shoes to me. “I want you to have these back,” she said. They were like new. But I had evil memories of those shoes. I put them out of sight on a closet shelf. They stayed there for nearly two years, until I signed up for the Golden Eagle 10K. I pulled them down and laced them on, already old by then, but hardly used.

            I raced without anyone in the family knowing I was going to. They accompanied me anyway. I wore something given me by each: Watch from Jo Ann; windbreaker from her parents; handkerchief from my youngest son; running socks from my daughter; hat from my oldest son; shirt from Jo Ann’s oldest son; and shorts from her youngest son. And the blue shoes from Momma and Daddy.

            Raced secretly, timid and afraid of failure, I guess. I needn’t have been. Because I earned two trophies–first in my age group, and first master runner. That floored me. I had not figured on such a favorable outcome.

            I had not figured on the next thing either: The man who presented the trophies, who twice shook my hand and handed me a tall mug, that man was my favorite student, a senior of civil engineering. He remains one of the most gifted students I ever advised or taught. As the cadet commander of the Army ROTC battalion, which organized the race, the job of race director fell to him.

            All this happened. As cadet Philip Messer handed his professor one of the trophy mugs, the university photographer snapped a picture of us. Turning the tables, Jo Ann secretly purchased a print, framed it and gave it to me for a Christmas present. It’s hanging on the wall yet. I just went and looked at it, student and professor smiling. Daddy’s blue shoes stand out.

            After the awards I got in my truck and headed home. When I pulled out on the main drag, I screamed so hard I hurt my throat.

            Other races followed. In less than a year I moved to marathons, a couple years later to Ironman, and a year after that to 100-mile ultramarathons. For seven years I actually got faster, rising age notwithstanding. At age 65 I ran a certified 5K in 19:06, a 15K in 60:39. Then my speed leveled off. A gradual decline began.

            Now I’m trying to stop the clock. At my age, if I run a race this year I hope the clock won’t show any more time than it did last year. If I run really well, I might even push the time back a bit. But, even if it’s just the same, it’s like improving–by, say, a minute on a half marathon, over two minutes on the full marathon.

            You can learn that from studying the age-grading tables. Those numbers were gathered from decades of recording how aging runners decline. They bring a tale of woe: Your time is going to go up; your speed is going to go down. The columns of figures express biology. And it is destiny.

            That’s not a whine. I accept it. You’re going to go down. I’m going to go down. But I don’t claim there won’t be a fight. Let’s drag it out. I’m going down all right, but I’m going down slow – chasing every screaming second. That’s the best hope now, going down slow.

Hole to the Sky, Door to Forty Years

          The climb up here was  spooky. No rock climber would call it technical, but it was steep and high and you had to hold on. When I'd first looked up and seen the arch I'd thought, a hole to the sky.

          Why would two old endurance guys seventy-plus-years-old be climbing on rocks? The short answer of course is we'd climbed up to get a closer look at the arch, one of no particular distinction, at that, one lacking even a picturesque name - not Rainbow Arch, Landscape Arch, or Delicate Arch, just plain Natural Arch. A longer and better answer, however, stretches back some forty years.

          Joel Bennett and I had been good friends while we were studying for our graduate degrees at Virginia Tech some forty years earlier. In that long-ago time we'd shared a lot of adventures, roaming the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains around Blacksburg, Virginia. Some were humorous, some funny, some hard, some even dangerous. In the intervening years we'd gone down separate roads - Los Alamos for him, Tennessee Tech for me. The years spayed out, the strings frayed and broke: we lost contact.

          Then his e-mail arrived. The subject line read "SOB," which stands for "Say, Ol' Buddy," following the expression of a common friend who used it was when he wanted something. Like, "Say Ol' Buddy, do you have a cigarette," or maybe, "Hey, Ol; Buddy, have you done that continuum homework?" The saying became our ironic greeting. The letter's salutation read simply "DG," as it was our habit to use each other's given initials. His signature read "best wishes, your old buddy, Joel Bennett." I call him JG.

          Retired from Los Alamos now, he and his wife Jackie wanted me to come visit them at their new home in the mountains of Colorado. He said they'd pick me up at the Alamosa Airport at any time. The tone of the message seemed like it came from the guy I used to know. I first had some travel scheduled to Spain and Morocco. Once that was over, I was on the ground at home just five days before heading to Colorado.

          And so here we are, standing in Natural Arch, looking down on Joel's truck looking small as a green pea at the base of the cliff far below, two guys just like before, at home with each other, at home with the wilderness. We'd climbed this cliff like we'd done a lot of things - no big plans, just started walking, then climbing, without even knowing who exactly had made the decision - if anybody had.
          In our VT days, we shared many misadventures. We went bow hunting once, camping in the woods beside a clear river, sleeping in Joel's old Ford station wagon. We meant to get up early, but the night before we sat in his car drinking George Dickel and listening to the radio until we nearly ran the car battery down. Peggy Lee was singing Is That All There Is? The song grabbed us. It expressed the tragic pointlessness of life in a way that seemed perfect. "Let's break out the booze and have a ball," she sang. We worked hard in those days, trying to pass courses, qualifying exams, language requirements, leaving our cubicles only late at night. I don't think we knew why. We slogged on, thinking, "that's all there is."
          On the hunt next morning we didn't get up until long after daylight. We where standing drinking coffee when a bow hunter actually walked through our camp. We though it was funny. Here's a guy actively hunting. It seemed futile and pointless. Is that all there is?
          We tried to walk through a mountain at Eggleston, Virginia on an abandoned railroad tunnel. We wanted to get to a fishing hole just below the slow bend in New River where the state-record smallmouth bass had been caught. It got dark in the tunnel, then still darker. Finally it was black as a cave. We stopped to let our eyes adjust. Gradually we realized we were surrounded by skinny, shiny things.
          "What is that?" Joel said.
          "Looks like snakes," I said.
          The next interval of ours lives held no sound at all - save one: the sound of sneakers pounding the ground. Joel's feet raced for the light. I was left standing alone; he posted a respectable time for the 100-yard dash. The shiny things turned out to be strips of aluminum-colored metal. Their purpose and presence there was not learned. We never reached that fishing hole.  

          Now, forty years later we climbed back down from Natural Arch, which is scarier than climbing up. I started a run at the base of the cliff. Joel's plan was to drive his truck down the single-track some six miles, park on Old Woman Road and ride back to meet me on his mountain bike. It was a cool day and getting lost in the wilderness wearing running shorts was a bad idea. Since I'd never been to this place before, prior to leaving he decided to give me some advice. 

          "Remember, when you come to the tee, go left."

          "Right! When you come to a fork in the road take it."

          "Right," he said.

          Left, it was. We still understood each other perfectly. 

          It was as perfect a place to run as you will find. The single-track offered a smooth surface, unlike the boulder-filled wash-out of a trail, and yet, like a trail, it kept me immersed in the immediate environment, running right by the piñon pines, boulders and bluffs that could offer cover to a stalking lion or hungry bear. On one of his bike rides, Joel told me about being stalked by a lion, which was finally run off by his dog. On another occasion he had to fight a bear, using his mountain bike as a two-handed club to hold it off, until, again, his exploring dog returned, together with another dog this time, and the three of them finally beat the bear off.

          Jackie and Joel live at an elevation of some 9,300 feet in the mountains bordering the San Luis Valley, near a town named Del Norte. The Rio Grande, clear and ripply and loaded with browns and rainbows, runs through town. Locals pronounce the town's name like it rhythms with "Del Snort," denying its Spanish heritage. It's their town; they can call it whatever they want to.  Joel reminds me, the Spanish were in this part of the country a long time before the settlements back east that mark the onset of our country's history for most people. It's a good point.

          The high elevation seemed hardly noticeable in my running. In a race, I'm sure, that would change, and I'd get out of breath. Running down Old Woman Road, I didn't notice it. Maybe you'd describe this location as high plains. The mountains and cliffs sit scattered all around me, big ranges like Sangre de Cristo loom in the distance. But Old Woman Road threads through it all, rising and falling in gentle rollers. I ran past a cliff Joel said was called Eagle Rock, which rises like a broad monolith a mile off the road. It's the habit of eagles to perch there. A couple of ranch houses snuggled against the cliff's base, a protected location.

          After a few miles, I saw Joel approaching on his bike in the distance. Bikes figure large in the part of Joel's history that I missed. It connects us in a surprising way, and colors the parallel paths of our similar stories.

          Before this visit, I'd had some concern. Although we'd been good friend, we'd had no contact at all in nearly forty years. I had changed and figured he had, too. Suppose he's totally different now, suppose, for example, he's become a political right wing nut, believer of wild conspiracy theories, a survivalist holed up in the mountains, fearful and anti-social - or any number of similar world views. Politics loomed, given that the presidential election followed my arrival by only four days. I didn't know what turn conversation might take.

          Turns out, Joel and Jackie had been concerned about the same thing. Better avoid talk of current events that could inevitably lead to presidential politics, seemed to be our tacit agreement. My first morning there, though, Joel brushed away all the pussyfooting with characteristic directness:

          "I don't know what you think about politics," he said. "I've heard that a Democrat says 'I've got mine and I'll share;' a Republican says, 'I've got mine and I'll get yours, too.'"
          Perfect - a political view based on generosity and charity, not hate and fear.We'd changed alright, both in the same direction. From then on we knew we'd be in agreement, able to talk about any damned thing we wanted to. Joel's politics isolates him in his family and neighborhood the same way mine does.

          We've led parallel lives. Joel had advised and taught graduate and undergraduate students at Los Alamos and carried out research projects. I'd done the same, except at Tennessee Tech and at the Army Missile Command. Maybe that's not too surprising. By earning PhD. degrees, we'd both prepared, intentionally or not, for a life in academe and research.

          But it went much further. Joel had taken up endurance sports (which we scarcely knew existed in our VT days), running and biking, specializing in biking. He'd won the New Mexico state championship on his road bike. After taking up running and triathlon, I'd achieved similar results in running.

          Small similarities were eerie. Once before a meal Joel pulled out a bottle of glucosamine and chondroitin. I started laughing. I've taken the same over-the-counter pill for a dozen years, same brand. A day later, when I absently held a gum brush in my had, a tiny brush that can go between teeth, it was his and Jackie's turn to laugh. Joel showed me his. These events kept happening. 

          Joel showed me his cowboy hat, hauled out its box and removed it from the plastic wrapper. It was a 3X beaver Stetson, seventies vintage, dark brown with a corrugated leather band and a JBS hat pin shaped like a branding iron on the buckle. Of all the models styles and colors of Stetson hats, the only one I'd ever seen like it is the one on my closet shelf back in Cookeville! 

          "Twin brothers of different mothers," Jackie said.

          We met up on Old Woman Road, JG and I this day. Joel turned, and we ran and rode on toward the truck. Once there, I decided to run on a bit further to round out my run. Joel loaded up and stopped for me on down the road. We drove back across Rio Grande, through Del Norte past the cemetery and fifteen miles up the dirt county road to where Joel  and Jackie Bennett have build their mountain home. It backs up to Horse Shoe Mountain, foothill of the 13,203-feet-peak named appropriately Bennett's Peak. 

          It took forty years. But it was what anyone would have to call a good day. 

          

Casablanca Marathon: A Journal

            The four-lane stretches northward toward Hassan II Mosque. I glance at the white surf crashing on the black rocks of the road's curving flank. At that moment electricity flashes through my legs and they turn to spastic stone. As I pitch forward Albino grabs me in a bear hug. He stands like a gate post holding me upright. The length of a marathon is 42K; we are at 31K...

Wednesday, October 17, Rabé de las Calzadas

Windows at Rabé 

      

          Again, I find myself running on el Camino de Santiago, running through Rabé de las Calzadas and onto the chalky dirt single-track that starts at the edge of town, at the little church with the walled cemetery with stone crosses, climbs two miles up a beautifully severe valley of steep cropland and sheep pasture, grand vistas marred by not a single man-made structure - no fences! -  finally to an abrupt crest offering an expansive view north where a tiny town sits in all that vastness like a stamp on a giant post card.

          I stand looking, thinking no one is around. Then, turning, I see a woman sitting at a pile of rocks on the bank above me. Our eyes meet. I spread my arms over the scene before us, and say,

          "Hermosa, hermosa."

          "What?"
          Oh. English.

          "Beautiful," I say.

          "Yes, it is."

          I ask permission to join her and climb the bank. I stand talking while she finishes a slice of pizza she'd saved. She wears straight blond hair and a gray jump suit, and she is from Holland, she says. As we talk, I notice a design on the ground a few feet in front of us and step over to see. The young woman from Holland follows. It is the outline of a heart made from field stones, maybe six feet across. The heart encloses a cross of stones. The cross frames the single letter "J"  on one side and on the other the letter "K." We stand looking down. 

          "Two sweethearts, I guess. Left a monument to their love," I say. And that may be right, two pilgrims inspired by the view.

          As we talk, I suddenly remember something, and it must surprise the Dutch woman to hear it from an American. It is a story about her own queen, Queen Beatrix. I read the story in Outside Magazine a decade or more ago. Queen Beatrix was scheduled to give a speech to the nation at the end of the year. It was routine political theater, nothing expected to be important.

          But Queen Beatrix didn't give a routine speech. She delivered a polemic, an environmental speech that changed Holland's direction and set the tone for a new era in that country. She said something like, "We are going to learn to live in a way that poses the least risk to all other livings things." Over the next few years, Holland did that, and became a world leader in green technology such as wind turbines. By stepping out front, the country captured an emerging new technology. They are yet a leader, due in large part to the wisdom and courage of Queen Beatrix.

          "She became my hero in that moment," I say to the woman. I don't tell her I even copied the article and saved it. We talk a few more minutes, and light rain starts. I wish her good luck and shove off.

          Altogether, I spend an hour on that road without seeing any kind of vehicle, only pilgrims on foot. A top-ten run of all time, a yard-stick to hold up to all others. And I put seven miles in the bag.

Thursday, October 18, Rabé de las Calzadas
       

El Camino stretches west of Rabé

          It is a windy day at Rabé de las Calzadas. From Albino's kitchen patio door I watch an eagle hovering in the updraft of the hill above the house, tapered neck, fanned tail.

          El Camino west of Rabé de las Calzadas is my newest favorite run. I met an old gent taking a walk there. We exchanged greetings. Caught up with him again on the way back, at the little church with the walled cemetery next to the sheep barn at Rabé. Stopped to chat. Told him in halting Spanish I was from USA. He listened kindly and intently, figuring correctly that one who spoke it so poorly could barely hear it at all. I spoke well of his puppy, a German shepherd mix. At his amazement, I told him I run for practice, that my friend Albino lives near Rabé and that Albino and I will run Marathon Casablanca in Morocco this Sunday. By way of sympathetic amazement, he made a gesture of exhausted runner breathing hard. I wished him a good day and shoved off.

          Albino has a DVD of The Way laying here on the coffee table. Why can't I find time to watch it?
          The alberque in Rabé has been hosting pilgrims for 800 years, according to a celebration banner I photographed there. Let's see, the USA has been around for 236 years...umm, something to thing about. Meanwhile, put me down for four easy miles.

Friday, October 19, Madrid

          As we drive into Madrid, radio RNE 3-FM, 95.8, is playing  a cut from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. Amazing! How did they know? It's only one of the best jazz recordings ever made.

          Terminal 4 of Barajas, Madrid throws you into confusion. Its architecture is so futuristic you feel like you've fallen into a science-fiction movie like The Matrix. Albino breezes through with practiced abandon. I can only draft his wake.

          In Casablanca, we've gained two hours - after I'd barely acclimated to losing seven hours flying to Madrid a week ago. Have to reset again. Sleepy and tired. But here's the answer:  Go to bed. The marathon is not until Sunday.

Saturday, October 20, Casablanca

          All chaos, all chaos, a stirring throng of people! Beggars sit on broken sidewalks that drop off abruptly, turn to dirt and abruptly start again, waiting to trip the unwary, sidewalks made of tile laid directly on dirt rather than a concrete base. Here and there metal studs stick up two inches high where a street lamp ought to be. Instead studs with tops polished shiny by thousands of footsteps stand as monuments to good intentions and failed plans. Waiting to kill you.

          We walked two hours in a maelstrom of traffic without finding either the starting line or the packet pickup - in the rain. I'd stupidly left my hat at hotel Barceló, and worn only a tee shirt against the weather. But it was a Flying Monkey Marathon tee, which fact did prompt me to sent a Tweet to Trent Rosenbloom, @hhflyingmonkey, the director of that race, the following: "BREAKING: flying monkey tee spotted on the street. Police arrest usual suspects. #casablancamarathon"

          Unless you are comfortable with Third-World chaos, better pass on this race.

Camel meat is for sale in Casablanca's Medina       

          Back at the hotel, we searched our smart phones for two hours looking for race location, and then gave up. Because we had an ace in the hole - Albino's friend Iñigo lives in this town. Albino called him up, and he eventually came to the hotel and guided us around the rest of the day, including the open-air markets of the Medina.

Marathoners tour Medina, Albino and me

          I was more comfortable afoot in the Arctic wilderness six years ago, where I knew a grizzly could easily kill and eat an unarmed hiker like me, than I was in Casablanca this day, a world more foreign to me than wilderness. Police seemed in hiding, afraid for their lives; most intersections had no official control that I could see. I saw just one cop all day long, standing in an intersection, traffic swirling around him, as irrelevant as a broom in a monsoon.

Life, raw and urgent, is a-swirl in the Medina 

          Oh, Mother! The places I go. Just making these pictures was risky. After following Iñigo all day - we could not have done without his help! - we are tired. We have been on our feet all day, tense all day, done without water all day. Can't drink water if you can't find a restroom. "It's complicated," Iñigo says when I ask. And we are supposed to run a marathon tomorrow? Worse, we both need to run a competent time to have a chance to catch our flight out of here. It is that close. That's how Albino rolls, courting exotic disaster. 

   

Sunday, October 21, Casablanca

          After my run collapsed and left me walking, Albino proceeded on, to get to hotel Barceló and bring a taxi back to the finish line for me - if I made it that far, and he didn't know if I would. Once we connected we were forty-five minutes behind schedule for our Madrid flight, where Isabel would be waiting to drive us the some 150 miles to Burgos, where Albino had two meetings scheduled the next morning. It was all coming undone. There was no time for me to take a shower. I pulled trousers on over my running shorts in the taxi, having already donned the finisher's tee, and prepared to ride the plane just so - if we actually managed to catch it. It was a tense ride to the Casablanca airport.

     Hassan II Mosque is massive, intricate, majestic

          Intense leg cramps had undone me at 31K, making even just standing impossible. Abino held me in a bear hug to keep me upright. I finally recovered enough to walk gingerly, Albino walking with me, grabbing me when he needed to avert my falling. Seven bottles of water failed to solve problem. I was severely dehydrated and I'd eaten all my salt and GU. After walking a 9K distance, I recovered enough to run the last 3K, and finished in 4:26 (unofficial), my worse finish ever.
          Now I need to sort out my thoughts. Until then it's not a story, only banal information: Old man runs disappointing marathon in strange town, nothing else.

Monday, October 22, Tardajos
          So now I walk around Tardajos and wonder and do what I mentioned - try to sort out my thoughts. I wander the ancient streets of the town and beyond, ostensibly to make two photographs, of Rio Arlanzón and the bridge across it. But mainly to think. What do I think?
          I said it was my worse finish ever. That excludes two marathons, the Rocket City Marathon, where I was pacing Amy Dodson in a training run for twenty-one miles, and the first Blister in the Sun Marathon, which I trotted through to help my buddy Josh Hite who'd organized the race. Didn't try to run it fast, having run an 8K state record in a night race just hours before that first Blister Marathon. So, making full disclosure.
          Albino and I ran together at Casablanca. We ran quite fast under the circumstances, a pace that would certainly have won second place in my age division at the Boston Marathon, maybe even first. That was crazy as hell. The day before we'd spent on our feet without drinking water. We stayed in the street so late, we didn't ever eat an official supper. I had an energy bar and drank a glass of powdered milk before going to bed. Some will claim no one should drink powdered milk ever, even for a marathon.
          And then there was this girl -  a young woman actually, a black woman. I saw her before the marathon started, standing in a pink top and spandex pants. She seemed alone, and a bit lost. I wanted to speak to her, but I was too shy. I went to the only toilet I knew about - although it was clogged and would not flush. A knock came on the door. When I finally opened the door to leave, it was this very woman, waiting her turn after me.
          I saw her during the race too. Albino and I passed her. After I blew up and was walking and Albino had left me, she passed me. In this strange city she seemed the only familiar thing in the whole world. She ran off, on out of sight. But I recovered enough to run again. With about 2K remaining, I passed her. After I'd finished and was wandering the fence wondering how I was going to find Albino, I came upon her again. We talked this time. It turned out she was from the USA, as not many here were, from Maryland. She was brave. We talked only a little, but I loved her very much. I remember.

Tuesday, October 23, Rabé de las Calzadas
          Beauty yet reigns. It does. From the hill above Albino's house I can see several towns. Rabé de las Calzadas is the closest. Further out lie Tardajos, Villabilla, Burgos... Also ample countryside stretches out before me, room to walk, run, and ride. Count the busted marathoner in for all that. Failure fails to negate future.

Rabé de las Calzada and countryside stretch out below me         

          This day I hiked to Tardajos with my backpack for groceries. Everyone thought I was a pilgrim on el Camino de Santiago, the trail that flows across northern Spain like a pipeline leaking money. Pilgrim spending boosts the local economy. Which must mean locals both love and hate it, love and contempt being two sides of the same coin.
          Found the vitals I needed. I want to fix Senorita Luz bonita a good lunch when she comes for her housekeeping chores tomorrow.
          Rio Urbel, which I crossed, is becoming my new favorite river. I could see four trout at the same time taking flies in the pool below the bridge. My fly rod is oh so far away.

After a long day's work, Albino stands smiling

          Mi amigo Albino esta un patron big shot, global risk controller for a top-fifty automotive manufacturer. But he held me in a bear hug like a soldier until I could stand alone after Sunday's blowup at Marathon Casablanca. And that falls in a separate category, oh my captain.

Earned: one Casablanca tee and medal

          Notwithstanding all the things I may someday find to say about the Casablanca Marathon, the finisher's shirt and medal do nonetheless reside with me. I own them. I earned them. Out on the course I'd had full-blown medical reasons for leaving them unclaimed in that far-away town. And that fact leaves precious little room for pride. Maybe we can allow a tiny bit of satisfaction: Notch Africa.