Two Women, Two Stories, One Goal

(A) Jill White runs down a Putnam County lane in preparation for next Sunday’s Komen 5K. (Photo by Dallas Smith). (B) Uber-runner Margie Stoll completes a track workout in July of 2008, running on the Harpeth Hall School track in Nashville where she does most of her training. (Photo by Hans Stoll).

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Most of the work I do these days falls under the heading of either "home maintenance" or "public service." Neither one pays me any money. And I'm not counting running. It doesn't pay either. Pro bono, I believe, the lawyers call that kind of work. But I'm not whining. All that fits neatly into some kind of plan, I suppose.

One public service gig I got talked into was to write a promotion story for the local Komen Race for the Cure 5K. Fortunately for me, I knew a couple of interesting women to write about. If the story of their experiences helps bring in some runners, well, then I'm glad I put it in the paper. From the Herald-Citizen, September 19, 2010.

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Two women of different generations, different backgrounds, will join in common cause next Sunday when the second annual Komen Race for the Cure 5K kicks off. Hundreds of runners will join them. The 5K starts at Tucker Stadium at 2:00 p.m., September 26. Race village opens at noon.

Local runner Jill White is half the age of Nashville’s Margie Stoll. Mrs. White was reared in rural Smith County and has always lived in Tennessee, while Mrs. Stoll lists the urban locations of St. Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. as her past homes. Both women are seasoned athletes. Their paths converge next Sunday.

Mrs. White attended the Komen 5K last year. Her blond hair was just then growing back out, and she wore a baseball cap for cover. Despite her recent bout with breast cancer, she may have won that race. She thought she was the first cancer veteran across the finish line. Then she realized she’d failed to put the timing chip on her shoe. “No chip, no time,” is the warning all racers know. “I was so mad!” she says.

Don’t count on her making that mistake this year.

She learned competition early, when she was growing up on the family farm near Gordonsville. Her father put up a basketball goal. He showed her how to shoot a hook shot. The hook shot didn’t take, but other shots did.

Mrs. White, who stands 5 feet 8 inches and is now 33 years old, played forward four years for the Gordonsville Tigerettes. She was co-captain during her senior year.

She recalls many games. In one, against Trousdale County, she scored 28 points. “I was a three-point shooter,” she notes simply.

And so she was. She recounts another favorite moment.

“The real highlight was my senior year and playing Celina, a big rival, and we were down by two points.” Although not the intended shooter, as the last naked seconds ticked off the clock, she found the ball in her hands and could not help but do what instinct and her dad’s teaching and four years of basketball playing demanded: she put up the shot. It went in.

“I shot a three-pointer, and we won!” The gym erupted in celebration. “And it was crazy!”

Then life after high school settled in. A stint at Volunteer State, interrupted by work in a factory and in the office of a nursing home, eventually led her to Tennessee Tech. In 2003 she earned a B.S. in Business Administration.

She also won the Golden Eagle 10K that spring just before graduation. She’d taken up running in the late 90s and had finished several road races and even several sprint triathlons. She had transferred her competitive spirit from basketball to racing.

“I took up walking and then walking got boring. I started running.” She has been running ever since. Except for one rude intermission:

Just six months after marrying insurance agent John White, in March of 2008, she discovered breast cancer. And her course changed.

Margie Stoll’s story began some 36 years before Mrs. White’s. Mrs. Stoll, who is 69 years old, has re-defined running in the state of Tennessee, at least for the older set. Age group state records are maintained for each year of runner age. Mrs. Stoll has set, and holds, some fifty such records, ranging from the 1-mile distance through the half marathon. Running Times magazine ranked her as the third best runner in the U.S.A. in her age group. At the 2009 National Senior Games Mrs. Stoll won two gold medals and two sliver medals.

Born in 1941, Mrs. Stoll grew up in Lombard, Illinois. She describes it as, “a pretty small town in those days. There was a cornfield at the end of my street.” The house she grew up in had been in the family since 1936. “So I never had to change friends. I had the same friends from kindergarten through high school.”

The bucolic beginning was bound to end. She went off to Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a degree in French in 1963. After working briefly for a brokerage firm, she resumed studies, at the University of Chicago, where she gained a teaching certificate.

But she gained much more; it was there that she met husband-to-be Hans, who was working on a Ph.D. in finance. They married in 1967. By then Dr. Stoll’s work had taken him to the University of Pennsylvania.

There then came a two-year stint when they lived in Washington, D.C. while Dr. Stoll worked a year for the Securities and Exchange Commission, and another year when he did research as a visiting professor for the Federal Reserve.

It was there, in 1969, that Mrs. Stoll took up running—and in a very unusual place. “We lived near Arlington National Cemetery, and I used to run through the Cemetery. They probably wouldn’t allow that now,” she says wryly. She ran for exercise and because she liked the feel of running.

Meanwhile, her husband was becoming a distinguished scholar of finance. The family returned to Philadelphia, and then eventually settled in Nashville in 1980, when Dr. Stoll accepted a position at Vanderbilt University. (Until his recent “semi-retirement” there, he held an endowed professorship and was the director of a research center.)

They had been settled in the new town for a year. Then cancer called. That brought a brand new challenge, one unlike running or finance, either.

It is that challenge that the Komen Race for the Cure seeks to help women meet (men, too, occasionally). It is a challenge that Mary Jo Smith knows all too well; she is this year’s race chair. Tennessee Tech First Lady Gloria Bell is the honorary race chair.

Says Mrs. Smith, “I had a really good friend who passed away from breast cancer. And I never want to see another sister or friend go through that.”

Mrs. Smith expects up to 1,800 runners in this year’s race, leading to a significant organizational challenge. It is one Mrs. Smith is well prepared to manage. Until recently, she was the special events coordinator for the state of Ohio. She retired and moved to Cookeville in 2007.

Since 2008 Komen Upper Cumberland has funded over $300,000 for education, screening and treatment for breast cancer throughout the 14-county region of the Upper Cumberland.

The signature event, says affiliate president Eileen Stuber, is the Komen Race for the Cure 5K. The race course has been certified by USATF. Chip timing will be used. More race information can be found at http://www.komenuppercumberland.org/. Runners can complete online registration there.

Cancer comes around at unhandy times. Mrs. Stoll would tell you that; her discovery came in 1982 when she was new in Nashville and without nearby friends. Mrs. White would tell you that, too; she was just beginning a marriage. Although the cancers of the two women fell 30 years apart, there seems a weary sameness to their treatments: a round or two of surgery followed by six months of chemotheraphy.

Those treatments are dreadful and make a patient feel awful. Mrs. White described the mood in the car when husband John would drive her to Nashville. “It was quiet. We didn’t talk very much. I had to mentally prepare myself.”

All her hair came out: “Eye brows, eye lashes, everything.” For her, losing her eyebrows was the worse. Their loss most made her appear enfeebled, she thought. “The good thing was I didn’t have to shave my legs,” she said laughing.

Mrs. Stoll went through a similar routine in 1982, but with a special cruel twist: she couldn’t talk about it. Breast cancer was somehow considered embarrassing and shameful back then, hushed up. Stricken women suffered in silence.

Mrs. Stoll can talk easily about her experiences now. But she notes, “I wouldn’t have said all this until about five years ago.” The Komen races in Nashville changed that, released her. Remembering the 2002 race, she says, “It seemed like a festival, a total different atmosphere than the hospital.”

Mrs. Stoll can look back on breast cancer with the accumulated wisdom of nearly 30 years. She prefers the word “veteran” over “survivor.” Her thoughts on why are compelling:

“I think of a survivor as someone who has gone through a lot of pain and hardship…I like to think of myself as a veteran. The ones who are the real heroes are the ones who went through the pain and had a harder time…and somehow it was stacked against them. Because they died, that’s why there is an organization like Komen.”

Margie Stoll and Jill White will toe the line in common cause next Sunday. They know how to suffer hard and they know how to run hard. Expect one of them to be the first cancer veteran across the finish line.

The King of Caribbean Marathons and a Boy Who Wanted a Watch

It seemed likely I'd never find Jason. A couple months after I'd sent an e-mail inquire to the race director, I quit thinking about it. Then a message suddenly arrived from Gail Jackson. "I know that kid," she said.

Gail owned the hotel in Negril where I'd stayed and she'd worked on the marathon's registration committee. "I was at his school yesterday...and asked if after the race did he go for a swim and talk to a white man?" she wrote. The boy's answer had been yes. He was the one. His real name was Oraine.

I promptly mailed one of my 100-lap Ironman watches to Gail to give to the boy. It was a watch I'd actually used in an Ironman triathlon. Sending him a watch I'd used seemed more personal than buying a new one. I put it in the original box with it's instructions along with a note of good wishes from me.

A month later, Oraine sent a letter thanking me. He liked to draw, and he included a pencil-drawn portrait on green paper. In his letter he said, "If there is anything you want me to do for you in drawing don't be afraid to ask."

Here is the story, from the Herald-Citizen, April 10, 2005.

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After I crossed the finish line I quit running and starting staggering, stumbling like a backward-walking drunk. I was okay. But my legs were confused—by fatigue and the sudden non-running. The music was pouring down and the heat was humming.

I’d just crossed the finish line of the Reggae Marathon at Long Bay State Park in Negril, Jamaica. It was December, 2004.

A young man sharply dressed in a white polo shirt and dark slacks handed me a cell phone.

“Want to call home?” he asked.

Good idea! The free call was a promotion of the carrier for which he worked. I dialed my home number but couldn’t get an answer—or rather I couldn’t tell if I got an answer, the music was so loud. So I walked a 100 yards away from the stack of speakers pumping out Reggae, across a field of grass toward the ocean, and tried again.

And there was Jo Ann’s comfortable voice from far-away Tennessee, bouncing off a satellite, yet sounding next door. She’d answered the first time, she said, but couldn’t hear anything except noise. I told her I was okay, that I’d had a poor run, but that I wasn’t surprised by that. The usual stuff.

After returning the phone, I went to check on partial results posted on a board past the booming speakers, and discovered that for the male age-group 60-99 I’d finished first with a time of 3:37:25. At most places where I run, that wouldn’t win a cakewalk. The competitive field here was not very deep, and the heat was a factor.

Under the female age group 20 to 29, I saw that a young woman named Shannon from West Virginia had finished third. With about a mile to go, I’d pulled even with her. We were both just trying to survive, and we chatted a bit. But she was running a little slower than I was. Finally I went on. I knew she was feeling terrible.

“I’ll see you at the finish line—if I get there,” I said.

“Oh, you’ll make it; you look strong,” she said.

Runners! Bless their happy little hearts—always upbeat and encouraging. They’ll say you’re looking good and running smooth, even when you’re dying—even when they’re dying. They can’t help it; it’s how they are. Running makes them crazy.

I meant to keep my promise to Shannon, so now I went back toward the finish line looking for her. I found her glued to a chair under a beach tent. She hadn’t gotten very far. When I told her she’d taken third she was so pleased she began warming to the idea of going to the Country Music Marathon that I’d told her about.

“That’s not very far…” she said, and trailed off, visualizing another marathon—even while the pain of this one was still in her legs. Here you see another trait of runners: terrible memory.

When I was a kid my dad liked to drink coconut milk. He’d drive a nail into the eyes to make holes and pour the milk into a glass. I learned to like that, too.

At this race, that was a piece of good luck. A man was trimming the shucks off coconuts with a machete, deftly whacking away over a plywood board that served as a chopping block. With the last whack he sliced the top off one and held it out to me. I dropped in a drinking straw and walked away sucking on the coconut, a new kind of post-race hydration—one lacking carbonation, artificial coloring, preservative or sweetener.

Race management had set up a medical center in the beach house, an open-air, wooden structure the size of a five-car garage. Dehydrated runners lying on cots and tables were getting IVs and massages. I didn’t need either one. I asked the woman doctor if I could leave my shoes in the corner.

“That’s an unusual request! But I guess it’s all right,” she said.

I didn’t want to lose my shoes—it was a mile walk back to the hotel.


“I’m going for a swim,” I told her.

“Go north. We’re only 90 miles from Cuba,” she said.

“I need to practice.”

I walked straight into the Caribbean wearing my sunglasses, cap, running shorts and singlet, race number still pinned to it, marathon medal dangling around my neck. The water was exactly the right temperature.

Nearby a half-dozen Jamaican men and women of mixed age tossed a soccer ball around. A young boy dived in my direction. I watched as he swam the whole distance under water. He came up facing me wearing a friendly smile, a handsome lad with short dense hair.

“Did you run the marathon?” he asked.

I told him I had. He said he had run the half-marathon distance as a member of a three-man relay team, a special competition organizers had provided for the school children, one I didn’t know about until that moment.

It’s a wonderfully idea to involve the children in something as positive as a race; they face an uncertain future in a country wracked by poverty, drugs, HIV, a soaring murder rate and a floundering economy.

Here we were, an old white man standing in the ocean with an eighth-grade Jamaican boy talking about running. We shook hands. I told him my name, and he said his was Jason. His relay team had taken second place. That was great, congratulations, I told him.

Jamaica’s children left a poignant impression on me, none more so than Jason. His easy, endearing smile was as natural as sunshine. He admired my sports watch, an eye-catching black and yellow number Jo Ann had given me.

“I want to get a watch like that,” he said.

I told him he could get one about like it at Wal-Mart for 30 or 40 dollars. I actually said that! And with that utterance I proved I could be as arrogantly stupid as any North American tourist who ever landed on Jamaican soil.

Exactly which Wal-Mart should he go to, one in Miami or Key West? Well, he’ll just have to check the airline schedules. And what about the 40 bucks?—just a bit over 2,000 Jamaican dollars. He’ll have to save his lunch money. The hard truth is a watch is not likely for him any time soon.

I wanted Jason to have a watch. To develop his running skills, he needs basic training tools. Who knows what he might accomplish? My impulse was to strip my watch off and hand it to him on the spot—I had two others at home. But Jo Ann had given it to me; and, too, it held my mile splits stored in the memory, not yet transferred to my file.

A few weeks after the race, I mounted an e-mail campaign to find Jason. Weeks went by. No luck.

What could Jason accomplish? Most Jamaicans are of African or mixed African-European descent, and, hence likely share the genes of the Kenyans who currently dominate marathon competition.

The success of Pomenos Ballantyne suggests the potential. The King of Caribbean marathons—so-called by the Sunday Gleaner, a Kingston paper—is from neighboring St. Vincent, and he easily won today’s marathon.

At the Negril Tree House on my first night in Jamaica, I had gone to the lobby, an open-air room. A leanly chiseled black man came up to me.

“Did you run the Stockholm Marathon?” he asked.

My T-shirt proclaimed it; I admitted it. At first I was wary and not very warm, thinking he might be a crook. He told me he was Pomenos Ballantyne. After we chatted a bit I realized that the man was indeed a marathoner. And when he told me that his time in the Trinidad marathon was something like 2:17—the number I recall—I realized more.

“Oh…you’re an elite marathoner.”

“Yeah, elite,” he said.

Over the next few days I talked with him several times. I asked him how fast he thought he could run a marathon in cool weather away from the Caribbean heat.

“Two-eleven,” he said.

“That would win the Country Music Marathon! They give big prize money and a new car,” I said.
In fact, that time would win most marathons.

On the Sunday morning after the marathon, I went up to the roof terrace of the Tree House for the breakfast buffet there. In the corner a jazz trio—bass, keyboards, drums—was playing the barn-burner “Mercy, Mercy.” People were still celebrating the marathon. Hotel owner Gail Jackson herself was there, wearing a flowing chartreuse dress, marathon metal around her neck, smiling at everyone. She had run the race, too. Not only that, but the race winner, Pomenos Ballantyne, had stayed at her hotel.

Pomenos was there too, busy talking with people. A tall picture had appeared in the Sunday Gleaner, showing his calm intensity during yesterday’s race. He was a hero. Not wanting to intrude on his party, I sat down at another table.

The band went through Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” and then took off on “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Pomenos showed why men run races. Women crowded around, waiting to have their picture made with him.

Bette Midler’s familiar melody about soaring higher than an eagle wafted across the terrace and drifted out over a calm blue ocean. Her voice wafted through my head.

Pomenos stood with his arms wrapped around two smiling young women—and soared higher than an eagle.

As he left the terrace, he angled by my table to say goodbye. He was heading back home to St. Vincent. I urged him to come to Nashville for the Country Music Marathon.

“I’d very much like to do that,” he said.

But I didn’t expect it. Travel money was a problem.

Blister in the Sun - Cookeville's first marathon draws 14 "elite fools"

Photo Captions
1. For those about to rock...runners wait for the start while race director Josh Hite, right, checks his watch. Photo by Martha Hite.

2. From left, Chris Estes finished second, Josh Hite first and Joshua Holmes was sixth. Photo by Joshua Holmes.

3. Anoine Moore finished first among women, fifth overall. Photo by Trent Rosenbloom.

4. Cookeville's Thomas Holt braved the heat to finish his second ever marathon. Photo by Trent Rosenbloom.

Runners

Name Age Gender City Time

1 Josh Hite 32 M Cookeville 3:32:07
2 Chris Estes 38 M Murfreesboro 3:43:44
3 Gary Krugger 25 M Edinboro, PA 3:54:36
4 Jeff Matlock 45 M Ashland City 3:57:21
5 Anoine Moore 43 F Pleasant View 4:04:38
6 Joshua Holmes 32 M Jackson 4:09:24
7 Dallas Smith 70 M Cookeville 4:32:11
8 Thomas Holt 33 M Cookeville 4:43:55
9 Naresh Kumar 27 M Chennai, India 5:33:46
10 Mikki Trujillo 34 F Cookeville 6:31:23
11 Angela Ivory 42 F Nashville 7:42:03
12 Diane Taylor 53 F Nashville 8:33:58
13 Bill Baker 59 M Nashville DNF
14 Trent Rosenbloom 40 M Nashville DNF

A Sucky Run

Looking up from the celly, Josh Hite interrupted the caller to confirm what he had just told him:

“Wouldn’t you say that the sucky part of the course was Cane Creek School parking lot?”

“Yeah, that’s about right,” I agreed.

Several runners were sitting around Josh’s dining room table eating, drinking and recovering from having just finished the first-ever marathon in Cookeville, Tenn. And Josh was talking to his friend about the course, specifically the sun-blasted part that meandered around the perimeter of Cane Creek Elementary School.

Here’s what do: Start at the Recreation Center in Cane Creek Park. Run down CC Camp Road to the Park entrance; circle Cane Creek Lake, returning to the center. Continue on the park path past the softball fields to the Tommy Thomas Bike Path on Jackson Street. Follow that path past the school a short ways and make a turnaround. On your way back to the center, just for good measure, detour around the perimeter of the school parking lot.

You will find that you’ve just run 5.24 miles. If you repeat that five times you will run precisely 26.2 miles, the length of a marathon.

At 7:00 a.m. last Sunday that is what 14 “elite fools” attempted to do: Run a marathon. In the South. In August. On a course largely exposed to the Sun.

Your doctor won’t recommend it.

How did such a thing happen? Credit elite Cookeville runner Josh Hite. A couple of months back he decided to host a marathon in Cookeville. He listed the “Event” on Facebook, sending messages to various running friends, inviting them to run it. At the time, he was calling it something like “Not Yet Named Marathon.” He advertised it as “NO FRILLS marathon... No certification. No shirt. No fee.” Along with the narrative, he also posted two inviting photos of Cane Creek Lake.

Enter Trent Rosenbloom, friend of Josh and the director of Nashville’s Flying Monkey Marathon, a joke of a marathon that has become the Rocky Horror Picture Show of all marathons, so popular that this year after online registration started, the race filled up in only 32 minutes. Trent knows how to promote a sadistic joke.

Trent hung the handle “Blister in the Sun Marathon” on Josh’s race and listed it on the website of the Marathon Maniacs. The name “Marathon Maniacs” explains itself.

Thus, the race was born, or at least a virtual storm of electrons about it was.

Replies rolled in: Maniac Jeff Matlock allowed “I’m in for the…No Name Run In The Sun Running is Stupid Hot Hilly Humid Marathon.” Later he tried to back out, calling it “crazy…insane.” But Josh shamed him into coming.

Photographer Elly Foster demurred, claiming, “As much as I would like to be in the company of such elite fools, I regretfully decline.” Susan Ford declined with the dubious endorsement, “This is crazy. I just love it.”

A smattering accepted. Josh switched to e-mail for those doomed runners, twice sending out race updates and bad news about hills and heat—six days before and 48 hours before. Those messages were addressed to “Masochists,” and ended with the signature “Sadist.” The last one announced, “You have only 48 hours until the soul in your shoes start to melt.” It’s not clear that the word “soul” in the place of “sole” was really a spelling error.

In any event, Sunday came, as it always does. Trees stretched their early morning shadows across the 14 runners standing on the pavement before the Recreation Center, where Queen City Timing had set up an electronic start/finish line.

We shoved off.

Josh was hoping to win his own marathon, but he was afraid of Gary Krugger, a compact, angular runner from Edinboro, Pennsylvania, who wears a plaited ponytail hanging to his waist and who had won the 2010 University of Okoboji Marathon. They took off together. The rest of us strung along behind, trotting along at various speeds.

The race dragged on. For me, it would be a special challenge to just finish. The night before I’d run the Race After Dark 8K (5 miles), which had started at 8:58 p.m. By the time I’d finished, taken a shower and had a snack, I got in bed around midnight. And I had to get up at 5 a.m. for the Marathon. I got precious little sleep. But there was a bigger factor than sleep deprivation—rest.

In lieu of competing in that 8K—a race he could have won, along with its prize money—Josh elected to pace me through the distance. His high-tech runner’s watch reads out instantaneous pace, distance, and elapsed time.

The state record for a 70-year old male is 37:00, and I was hoping to break it. Josh’s pacing helped me do that. I finished in 33:58, running an average pace of 6:48 per mile. I ran a pending state record, I was the first finisher over 55, and I won $100 prize money.

I had gone all out and saved nothing for the next morning’s marathon. In the last half-mile stretch my speed had steadily increased to 6:15. But at a terrible cost.

Now knee-deep in the marathon, I had to pay. I could only go slowly, a reality the heat would help assure.

On my first outbound pass toward the school I met extreme runner Angela Ivory. She is fighting cancer and cannot run as fast as she once could. After a bout some seven years ago, the cancer recently metastasized to her spine and has since spread to her liver, lung, and skull. Josh gave her an early start so that she would not finish so late in the day. She has completed some 170 marathons and 100-plus ultramarathons. A wounded warrior, she soldiers on.

Despite the heat and threat of cramps, my race ironically passed pleasantly. Ha! Thanks to going slow. It’s the racing that makes it hard, not the distance.

Drama started on my fourth lap. As I approached the boat ramp someone was calling. I turned to see Josh 100 yards behind. He was in his fifth and final lap, a lap ahead of me. He was alone and in the lead, but he had blown up.

“Dallas, wait!”

I stood waiting. He was reduced to walking. He wanted company to help him keep going.

“Go with me,” he said.

He had done as much for me the night before. We went into the woods together.

“Dallas, this sucks.”

“Yeah.”

He was irrational, afraid Gary Krugger was going to catch him. Although Krugger was nowhere to be seen, Josh kept mumbling pace numbers:

“…if I can just run 10-minute miles…” Then a few seconds later: “…if I can run 12-minute miles…” Then he’d go over it again.

But it made no sense figuring pace without even knowing where Krugger was. Josh had dropped him on the second lap and then gone hard on his third lap to put him out of sight. In his fourth lap then he had gone deep into his energy reserves. Finally, now, he had hit bottom. He could only run brief distances, and then he had to walk again. He was obsessed with Krugger suddenly catching him.

We reached the high trail on the north shore. It offers a commanding view of the trail behind us, including the long levee. Krugger was nowhere to be seen. I looked at the woods across the lake.

“If he’s out there, he must be in the trees,” I said.

“He’d be over there,” Josh said, pointing farther back, along CC Camp Road.

I didn’t know why he was worried. To finish, Josh had only a half-mile to reach the center. After that all that was left was the two-and-half miles out-and-back to the school.

“He couldn’t catch you if he had a motorcycle,” I said.

Then I remembered where I’d last seen Krugger. Martha, Josh’s wife, had set up a table loaded with food and drinks in the shade at the center. When I left there on my fourth lap —which was slightly before Josh left on his fifth lap—Krugger wasn’t going to catch anybody.

He wasn’t running. He was standing in the shade having a hushed talk with his girl friend, a pretty blond woman named Morgan Cummings. She was on crutches from a stress fracture in her hip. She is a marathoner, too, and she sometimes even runs on her crutches.

We returned to Martha’s table, Josh yelling, “Ice water! Ice water!”

Krugger wasn’t there. We headed toward the school, Josh’s last segment, and suddenly met Chris Estes, a man with the physique of a body builder. He was maybe three miles behind Josh.

“Did you get Krugger?” Josh asked.

“What?”

“Did you pass Krugger?”

“Yeah.”

“Way to go, dude.”

Josh had it. Krugger wasn’t even second; Chris was. And either one was farther behind Josh than Josh was from the finish line. Josh had only to go to the school, pass through the parking lot inferno, and return to the Center. He could walk all the way.

Which he mostly did, winning with 3:32:07, a time far off his capability. Chris held onto second, and Gary Krugger ended up third.

Meanwhile, Angela Ivory had joined with a friend, Diane Taylor. When Angela completed her last lap, Diane still had a whole lap to go. Angela decided to stay with Diane for another lap, thus covering a distance of 31.4 miles, 50K. Hence Angela finished Cookeville’s first marathon, and created, and finished ad hoc Cookeville’s first 50K ultramarathon.

Most runners talk about their PR, by which they mean “personal record,” or their best finish time. After this hot, hilly race, I heard a new term—PW, “personal worse.” I set one myself.

Twelve of the 14 starters finished. Once runners returned home, Facebook crackled.

Chris Estes thanked Josh for, “putting that insane race together.”

From Jeff Matlock: “The weather was too hot!...I’ll be back next year!!”

Trent Rosenbloom: “That was silly.”

Naresh Kumar, who calls himself the Indian Monkey, says he “…was stupid enough to continue with the race and foolish enough to finish it.”

Cookeville marathon virgin Mikki Trujillo summed it up: “That was the hardest thing I have EVER done…”

Tip Your Hat to These Two Women

Two ladies raced. I happened to be there. And I was glad. It led to one of my favorite stories. From the Running Journal, July 2010.

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You should have seen Margie Stoll and Marie Threadgill.

They had not met each other before that Saturday morning of September in 2004. They were acquainted only by reputation.

Ms. Stoll, then 63, was the fastest senior runner in Tennessee, dominant at all distances from one mile to the half-marathon, having recently run a 5K in a time of 21:54. She sets an age-group state record every time she runs. She will go on to set over four dozen new marks. A few years later she will gain a national ranking of third in Running Times Magazine, and go on to earn two gold medals and two silver medals at the National Senior Games.

She doesn’t just win. She destroys. She destroys records, and leaves her competition far behind her, out of sight over the hill somewhere. I see her frequently around Nashville, where she runs most of her races.

Ms. Threadgill, also then 63, was more of an occasional racer. She hails from West Tennessee, ran races in that area, and runs a few of the Tennessee State Park Tour races. She is fast too; when she runs, she wins. I had gotten to know her a bit at the Tour races.

So Ms. Stoll and Ms. Threadgill usually run different races. Their paths had never crossed—not until that Saturday morning.

A story about two women old enough to be your mom, you say? Bite your tongue, sonny. Yes, if you insist. They would not deny it. They are age-group athletes, after all. Old enough to be your mom, maybe. But, on the racecourse, fast enough to run your legs off! Walk a little slower when you walk by them. And tip your hat, or, by grab, there might be trouble.

There is a mark painted on the road in front of the River View picnic shelter in Nashville’s Shelby Park. The Nashville Striders running club put it there. It marks the beginning of 15,000 meters, or 9.32 miles. At 7:30 on that Saturday morning, Ms. Stoll and Ms. Threadgill stood with several hundred other runners behind that mark when a man fired a starter pistol.

Then they met. Somewhere along nine miles of exquisite agony they became acquainted; they both suddenly knew.

A race sorts things out. Soon the crowd around you thins out; the pack gets strung out along the course. You look around and find out who’s with you, find out who your competition is. There comes a moment—as I think it did with Ms. Threadgill—when you suddenly realize, there she is!

And the next phase of your life changes. You pour every desperate last atom of energy into getting to the finish line first. In that moment, nothing else in the world matters at all.

Of course Ms. Threadgill’s chances were poor against Ms. Stoll, a runner who had probably never been beaten in her age group. If you saw her you would understand why. She is tall and slender, and her long legs make each stride count, lapping up the miles. Ms. Threadgill is smaller, maybe standing five feet three, but with the quickness of a point guard. Quickness aside, nobody beats Ms. Stoll.

That day Ms. Threadgill did.

Afterwards, she was as giddy as a schoolgirl. Her bright eyes flashed.

“I won!” she said.

“What? You beat Margie?” I barely believed it. I’d missed their finish, myself, recovering.

Ms. Stoll, in defeat, was gracious. Her eyes twinkled; she seemed as happy as Ms. Threadgill was.

“Did you know Margie before today?” I asked Ms. Threadgill.

“No, but someone pointed her out to me before the race.” Ms. Threadgill had known whom she faced. I asked Ms. Stoll if she had ever seen Margie before.

“No, we met on the course,” she said.

So they did.

Ms. Threadgill covered the 9.32 miles in one hour, twelve minutes and two seconds, Ms. Stoll just seven seconds slower. These two smart, funny, friendly, generous, gracious ladies competed as fiercely as fighting bantams.

You should have seen them.

How good was their run? Well, in endurance sports, men hit their peak around the age of thirty. So I looked at the performance of the men in the 30-34 year-old age group, 30 runners that day. Ms. Stoll and Ms. Threadgill would’ve placed in the top half of that group. In other words, these senior women beat the majority of the men who were in their prime. Overall, they easily placed in the top third of the whole pack of 375 racers.

Do I have to say it again? Tip your hat.

Look what these women have done! Can’t somebody learn from that? Isn’t the lesson plain? Get moving. Do something—anything!—the opposite of nothing. In motion is life, in stasis, death. Soon enough it’s over and done. Don’t mess around.

We stood around that Saturday waiting for the awards ceremony like a few hundred sweaty people at a cocktail party of Gatorade, bagels and bananas. Ms. Stoll and Ms. Threadgill had become inseparable, although they’d never met until that morning. Every time I looked around they were huddled, talking and laughing, sometimes with others, sometimes alone.

They reminded me of sorority sisters reunited after a long time. Perhaps they had played intramural football. Given her height advantage, Ms. Stoll played quarterback and Ms. Threadgill, with her quick feet, played wide receiver. They formed a spiritual bond in that game long ago, a bond flicking from Ms. Stoll’s throwing arm along the ball’s delicate arc to Ms. Threadgill’s outstretched hands, a bond undiminished by time. And now they were together again, a team again, like time hadn’t passed.

Of course that never happened; they’d just met. Had it happened, I doubt they would have been better friends than they seemed to be. Their meeting two hours earlier had been a galvanizing one.

Ms. Stoll and Ms. Threadgill went to school long before Title IX, before women had many opportunities in sports, before people knew what women could do.

Driving home that day, I wished I’d told Ms. Threadgill more about how impressive her performance was. Before daylight that morning when her alarm rang, she must have had second thoughts about throwing off the covers only to drive to Nashville and face a runner everyone knew was invincible. That takes courage. She has plenty of grit in her craw.

And Ms. Stoll—I wished I’d told her something, too. Her loss didn’t diminish her one sliver. Instead, it made her stronger. It may have been the luckiest run she ever made. It will certainly be one of the most memorable. I’ve been on the losing end of a duel or two, and the memories of those are the most vivid of all. Ms. Stoll will always remember the race fondly.

As the awards ceremony started that Saturday, Ms. Stoll and Ms. Threadgill stood there side by side, sweaty like we all were, their hair hanging limp in wet strings, soppy as rags. They were a mess.

They were beautiful.

They were magnificent.

You should have seen them.

Summer Heat Reveals Artifact of Marathon Man

Following a summer training run, a brief nap etched the runner’s outline in sweat on a concrete slab. The drawing reveals a tiny head and scarcely any feet at all. Hardly archaeology, you say. Yet one clearly sees a grotesque artifact of Marathon Man, his self-portrait of sorts. The figure, at once somber and absurd, lies quietly waiting in the shade. From the Running Journal, August, 2009.

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He looks out from a prison of concrete and sweat like one of the ancient petroglyphs etched into the red-rock wall of a Utah canyon. Unlike those enduring portraits, Marathon Man is doomed and ephemeral, fleeting and soon to depart, just like those ghostly Utah figures say the Anasazi, their creators, did.

We rush forward while we can, and wonder: Are we doomed, too? Does Marathon Man say that? If not, what does he say to us? And what shall we in turn say about him?

Gazing at the concrete, its dappled-gray, sweat-receptive porosity, we see a piercing coolness beckoning from beyond, a comfortable firmness that like bedrock can be counted upon, even if we aren’t sure upon for what. “Lie here,” the figure says. “Let the weariness drain away.” The waves of heat rolling over the cold surface are thus soothed and quieted, like a sweet red sunset. And he speaks again:

“Do you see now…do you see what a marathon is?”

Paradox: In order to contest a marathon in the cool air of autumn one must train through the withering heat of summer.

Run 12 miles in July. Rest on concrete. Dream of October’s race. Increase understanding. Produce a portrait.

A portrait in mixed media, to be sure, an image rendered in sweat and concrete. Every artist must know his materials.

We shall address that topic now. Let us consider concrete’s properties: its density, specific heat and porosity, its modulus of elasticity, its twenty-eight day compressive strength and so on. The properties of sweat must not be neglected either, especially the viscosity and surface tension, quantities blithely ignored by apparel makers, thus leaving runners with blistered toes and bloodied nipples despite the millions those makers spend developing advertising claims.

But artists have little interest in materials science, seeking instead an intuitive, more transcendental (they would say) kind of knowledge. Very well, we shall eschew technical handbooks and their dreary data-filled tables. Experience is the artist’s best teacher, says the empiricist.

To know sweat, he advises following this procedure: Run 15 miles in August. After stretching, sit in a wooden chair on a deck under the sun. Note the sweat-saturated shorts and how the liquid runs from them onto the chair bottom and drips from there steadily onto the wooden floor planking below.

Sit very still. Note the growing puddle size underneath, how it resembles a glistening low dome, the beveled edges bulging with a curvature shaped by the forces of surface tension and gravity working in concert with the fluid’s viscosity and density. Each force plays its part in exquisite and elegant harmony, obeying precisely the commanding baton of Sir Isaac Newton.

It is best if, for drainage purposes, the planking has a sight slope. Puddle diameter is thereby limited. Soon, once the puddle becomes hand-sized perhaps, gravity overpowers the ability of surface tension to corral all the fluid. A bulge forms on the puddle’s downhill side and gradually takes the shape of a tongue creeping forward like molasses. While sweat continually drips into the reservoir, the tongue—one-and-a-half-inch in width now—grows ever so slowly outward from the puddle, like an amoeba dividing.

A new phase thus begins, the problem passing from one of quasi-statics to the case of fluid dynamics. Engineers, no doubt, will insist on computing a Reynolds’ number. But we shall not. No, we remain faithful to empiricism, content to observe the tongue crawling forward, fascinated by its growing length, reminded of the blob oozing under the door in the old Steve McQueen classic.

To eight inches it grows, to a foot, to two feet…

Finally, at a tongue length of 32 inches we conclude our exercise in sweat flow and wander off in search of a cold drink, having developed a powerful thirst.

An explanation, if not outright apology, may now be in order, we realize. During our rather tedious discussion of the chosen materials—in which, of course, we only scratched the surface and barely included enough data to suggest the complexities of material selection—during this, the reader may well have concluded that we had forgotten altogether about the image that began this discussion. But, no, like a good story plot, we shall now return to the beginning, to the image of Marathon Man itself.

The perceptive reader may well object to the grandiose name given to our image, claiming, after all, to see nothing more than a sweat angel. But we reject that simple slander, noting a distinct lack of “angelic” qualities in the image and detecting in their place a trace of sinister overtone. If “sinister” is too strong a word, then at the very least, could one grant, say, “a severely stern austerity?”

Very well then. Consider first the feet of M.M.—nonexistent, owing to the head-on perspective, perhaps. Turn your attention to the calves, however. Note, in the rendering, how huge they are. A marathoner needs strong calves for a vigorous push off and for hill climbing. Our running man exhibits calves to envy.

Ascending further, we encounter a small mystery: The over-developed hamstrings that give the legs of most runners their evocatively curved taper are nearly absent in Marathon Man. Why, one wonders? Moving a bit higher, the riddle solves itself. We realize the cause of the imperfect impression: the hamstrings were held high by the lofting effect of the powerfully developed gluteus maximus muscles, a muscular trait often prized in mate selection rituals.

Without doubt, the most astonishing feature of M.M. must surely be the absence of forearms and hands. But of course!—those appendages being totally useless for running. All the runner needs in their place are swinging counterweights. M.M. meets that requirement with his adaptation of massive upper arms, a mass quite sufficient for counterweight purposes, it seems.

Kindly accept, if you will, the tiny head of Marathon Man. He needs only a small portion of a normal brain, the part concerned with speech that repeats over and over in a continuous loop the stupefying phrase familiar to marathoners everywhere: “Keep going forward, keep going forward, keep going forward…”

Wretched Runners Forever Doomed

The stars in the very sky! What novelist would have put them there? What painter painted them? Who would have visualized stars as a race feature? But there they were, in a sky black as doom, the last thing I would have thought I'd be thinking about at a marathon. But, then, surprises are what bring delight to life. From the Running Journal, June 2010.

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Soon enough it comes time to run the race.

The pre-race fiesta, a night of fitful sleep and the dark-shrouded ride to Long Bay State Park, where the race starts, are all past. Finally, you stand at the starting line, as we do now. It is a moment that hums with primordial emotion.

We’re all here: Two young black women each weighing maybe 85 pounds stand next to me, looking like they could run down a cheetah. Young black men in dreadlocks are here, as are housewives from North America. Old white guys like Burt Carlson and me, we’re here too.

Somewhere up front, Pamenos Ballantyne, the soft-spoken 30-year old Olympic marathoner from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, prepares to win this 2004-edition of Jamaica’s Reggae Marathon.

Temporary floodlights cast light on the immediate area around us. Except for that, we stand on the highway in the dark and face south, the direction we will start running. A giant wall of speakers sits in the grass pumping out reggae music.

They have lighted torches. The wavering flames along the side of the road will help guide us until daylight comes.

It can’t be long now. The crowd shifts forward gently and tightens up. Bodies are close and you can look square into the wide wild eyes of the young woman standing nearby.

Despite closeness, each runner is alone. The road ahead opens on 26 miles of mystery—but reveals no mile, betrays no suspense. It opens instead on your soul. What do you see, marathoner?

Answers vary. Some are stricken by dread, fear. I recall a man from Maryland, at an Iowa marathon, telling me that as soon as the race starts, he immediately has to go to the restroom. Just nerves. He always runs quickly to the bushes, wherever he can, he said.

I recall a young woman standing next to me just before the start of the Boston Marathon. Her eyes darted about like a trapped animal.

“Nervous?” I said.

“Yeah! Aren’t you?”

The truth is I wasn’t—and never have been at the start of a marathon. That seems strange to say. I am by nature shy and timid, usually overcoming those tendencies with some effort. But a marathon does not intimidate me, despite all that might happen in it. Perhaps my running habit has changed me. Certainly it has!

As for now, while runners press in, I stand casually scanning the night sky. Overhead the moon is at third quarter, half full. Despite its glare and that of the floodlights, I can see stars with a sparkling brilliance I haven’t witnessed in years. The glorious view comes as a surprise. It is due to the relative darkness surrounding Negril. On the western tip of Jamaica, Negril is surrounded by a dark ocean. And inland, the swampland known as the Great Morass is dark too.

The town itself has little wasted light flooding empty parking lots. Neon lights advertising stores to a sleeping town scarcely exist. Nor do security lights, so helpful to the crooks. At night, it is dark. As it should be. Light pollution so common in the States—even in the countryside now—is largely absent here. And in the absence of this photonic indulgence, what do you get? The greatest view in the universe—the very universe itself.

We’ve nearly managed to blot it out in Tennessee, where I live. The dusty glow we radiate into space blanks the dim stars and dims the bright ones, leaving little to see. Take a survey: How many people under 30 have ever seen the Milky Way? We’ve pulled the curtain on a panorama that guided and awed humankind for millennia in everything from religion to agriculture.

Here I’ve found a new way to wait for the race to start—study the heavens. There in the east is the red giant, Arcturus, burning bright. Arching to the north my eye skips along the handle of the Big Dipper, a big bopper of a constellation everyone ought to know. It’s upside down now, spilling a cosmic drink, the front edge shooting straight toward Polaris, the North Star. Always at true north, the star is lower than I’ve ever seen it. At Negril’s latitude of 18 degrees, Polaris appears just 18 degrees above the horizon, geometry tells us.

A bright light is just south of Arcturus, where no bright star should be; it must be one of the wanderers. Not red enough for Mars, too high for Venus and too bright for all the other planets save one, I reason, by Jupiter, it must be Jupiter.

To the west Orion the hunter marches off this night’s stage, followed by Canis Major the big dog. Sirius, the dog’s nose, is the brightest star in the sky—except for the one we circle, the sun.

The race starts and jolts me out of my astronomical idyll. I run south with the pack, trying not to step on people. At three miles we cross the Negril River, make a turnaround at a traffic roundabout in Towne Centre, and head north.

Approaching the turnaround, I realize that I must have already met Pamenos, the race leader. But it is still so dark I never knew when.

On we go, heading north now. The course goes past where we started and continues on north, following the meandering coastline past Bloody Bay and Orange Bay, to finally arrive at Green Island Harbor, where it makes a second turnaround at the 16-mile marker. From there the 10-mile return to Long Bay State Park brings the total distance to precisely 26.2 miles.

At the aid stations they hand out water packaged like I’ve never seen before—sealed in a clear plastic bag, hand-sized, a little water pillow. It can’t splash out like a cup. You can bite the corner and conveniently squirt it in your mouth without stopping.

Somewhere around mile 9 the sun rises. We can’t see it for clouds. What we see are the green-shrouded trees of the Great Morass in stark relief against gray-streaked salmon stratus.

Soon afterwards my run wilts in the heat. I expected it—just not so soon. At mile 11, my pace creeps over eight minutes per mile. By comparison, my average pace for the whole distance in the Country Music Marathon was 7:25. Here I can’t even hang onto eight—and I know it will get worse.

Part of the problem is that this is my twenty-fourth race this year, way too many. I’m declaring a rest the moment I finish! If I do—because you don’t know. Just past mile 13, I am running alone, when here comes Pamenous going the other way. The man is miles ahead of me. He has already made the turnaround at mile 16 and is headed back, well clear of challengers, who aren’t even in sight.

Two lone marathoners meet on the road. Separate in culture and speed and over a generation apart in age, we spare a common experience here today—and run exactly the same distance. He looks relaxed, comfortable, just running fast enough to win. We pass.

“Go, Pamenous,” I yell.

“Yeah.” A little smile.

By the time I make the turnaround and reach 18.5 miles, near where he is now, he will be breaking the tape at Long Bay, winning this marathon for the third time in four years.

Actually by the time I reach mile 18, something else happens—my watch shows me 9:12, a number greater than nine minutes for the first time. In the eight miles remaining, I will manage to push the pace below nine in only three of them. Eight minutes, slow early on, has now become a wistful dream.

The mercury pushes into the 80’s and the sun bears down.

At the little town of Orange Bay a scattering of people stand on the roadside gossiping, watching, applauding. Little kids play and ride bikes.

My slog continues. A sardonic fathom narrates:

“Stand aside, ladies and gentlemen! Pay attention. Here comes one. Look! Witness the heroic effort! Note how ponderous it is—how puny the effect. See, his energy is gone. See how his knees barely bend, how his feet nearly scrape the ground.”

“And see how, even knowing that, he keeps going, and trying harder and harder—and gets slower and slower. Check his loss of muscle strength, too!—see that, the slumping body, the loss of posture. Pathetic, I tell you.”

“I got to say ‘desperation.’ That’s the word. Look at that face, folks. A grimace frozen, a death mask, if I ever saw one. He’s not alone either. Here come some more. Applaud if you will. Shed a tear, sentimental fans. These wretched souls, can’t stop. They are forever doomed to run, run, run.”

“And here’s the dangedest thing: I swear—can you believe it? —by tomorrow they’ll be describing this as ‘fun,’ and using expressions like ‘words can’t explain...’ and so and so on. Yes, they will!”

“Stand back, folks. Make room. Don’t get too close!”

My feeble trudge ends after three hours, 37 minutes and 25 seconds, my slowest time in years. For the 60 and over age group, I’ve finished first—not because I ran fast, but for the good and usual reason that no one else ran faster.

On the Eve of the Reggae Marathon, No Bananas

For these hot summer days, a hot story from Jamaica. From the Running Journal, May 2010.

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The man latched onto me like a hungry tick.

I was at the pre-race pasta supper for the Reggae Marathon in Negril, Jamaica one December a few years ago. A long line of open tents covering tables of food had been set up in a sports park. Serving would start soon. At a separate tent I’d just registered and picked up a plastic goodie bag containing my race bib, timing chip, tee shirt and other complimentary items.

The one item of food I was looking for on this tropical island and could not find was the same one every other runner wanted but could not find: a banana. At the registration tent I learned the problem. A handwritten sign stated, “Yes we have no bananas, courtesy of Hurricane Ivan.” Ivan had barged into town a few weeks earlier. He stayed for a couple of days and blew the bananas slam off the trees.

Runners milled around, waiting for the food lines to open. I wanted to talk with some of them, but a man from New York had taken over my party. He was friendly enough—too friendly enough. I thought he was going to talk my leg off. His life history was mine for the taking—or listening. Philip, as I will call him, was red-bearded, maybe fifty years old, and he was wearing a bicycling hat like riders in Europe use.

He’d gotten lucky and won the lottery at his running club back home. The prize was a trip to Jamaica for the Reggae Marathon. He was observing the race, not actually planning to run it. The club paid his way just to promote the race. He’d already decided to come back and run the race next year.

Philip’s wife had come too. But that was not lucky. Their plane had been scheduled to leave New York at seven in the morning. Everything unraveled; it was a long story. There were mechanical problems, plane substitutions, re-scheduling and so on. They flew errant flights around the eastern United States for a while before actually heading toward Jamaica. Instead of arriving in Negril later that afternoon as planned, they didn’t arrive until three in the morning the next day.

His wife was mad as a wet hen.

“She had to go five hours without a cigarette,” he shouted. “Even after we got on the ground, she couldn’t smoke until we cleared immigration.” She was still back at the hotel, he told me, on a section of the beach where clothes are optional. She could smoke there. That was a good place for her.

“Next year I’m bringing my girlfriend instead of my wife,” he announced. That’ll work out a lot better, he thought. She likes to swim and bike and run. Yeah, that’ll be better. Oh, he still lives with his wife, you know—that’s not a big problem—but it’s just that his girlfriend likes to do what he does.

Of course, he hadn’t been looking for a girlfriend—she just came along. “We went running together a few times,” he explained. She was just a running partner. But one thing led to another. They got to be friends. Soon they went bicycling together. And so on. It was all very natural. She likes the same stuff he does. He’d made up his mind about the matter—next year he was bringing his girlfriend. Even his wife might like that better.

He was friendly, but I needed to scrub him off before he started talking about real estate and brothers-in-laws. I couldn’t even catch a chance to look through my goodie bag. A woman from California saved me. She sat down behind me and started talking about San Diego’s Rock and Roll Marathon, of which the back of my T-shirt reminded her. She was as big a talker as Philip, and for a minute I thought I’d made a mistake taking her on. I was caught in crossfire, yammering coming from two directions instead of one.

Then I had an inspiration. I gently deflected her comments to Philip, nurturing a tentative dialog between them. It blossomed into a full-blown storm, an even match. I took the opportunity to duck out. I wanted to find Burt Carlson.

I found Burt sitting on the curb at the head of the line of food tents, waiting for the food bars to open. He’s a story. When he finishes this Reggae Marathon it will bring his total to 268 marathons. He’s 79 years old (this was in 2004) and he’s here to run in this humidity and heat. A doctor wouldn’t recommend it.

But I wasn’t surprised; I’d seen his picture in the online race literature, where he’d run the race the previous year. I figured he’d show up. Still, how old do you get before you learn you won’t be back? Older than 79, if you’re Burt.

It was Burt who blew my cover on the bus ride from Montego Bay. A bunch of beer-drinking senior citizens had been throwing a loud party on the bus. A situation I don’t recall confronting before that day—rowdy senior citizens! I’d hoped to keep my mind quiet by avoiding marathon questions from people who I figured didn’t know a marathon from a motorcycle.

The driver had made a restroom stop for his revelers—smart driver. As passengers climbed back on, someone tapped me on the shoulder and I looked up.

“Have you run this one before?” Burt Carlson said. I hadn’t seen him on the bus—he’d been seated behind me somewhere. He looked surprised when I called his name.

Actually, I’d run a race with him, the 41-mile Strolling Jim ultra marathon in Wartrace Tennessee, on an unseasonably warm day in May four years earlier. A man from St. Louis had introduced us. The man from St. Louis quit the race, got in his truck and split for home. Burt kept going, even past the hilly section they refer to in the plural as “the walls.” He kept going—on through that day’s heat—until he got to the finish line where the race’s namesake, Strolling Jim, the first world champion walking horse, is buried. The race director was drinking beer and grilling barbecue chicken, a victorious woman runner was throwing up while her mate tenderly held her hand, and I was sitting very still in a folding chair concentrating hard on staying conscious.

Images of a race, I remember Burt.

The food line opened, and Burt and I started through. I believe it was the most elaborately abundant collection of food I’ve ever seen. It was not a fiesta; it was several; each tent was a fiesta unto itself. Here were local delicacies—curry goat, jerk chicken, whitefish—and a variety of cooked vegetables. Food of every description was kept warm over open flames, attended by chefs in white hats. One tent featured a table piled high with baked bread shaped like animals—squid, fish, snake, alligator….

From the total available, only a tiny sample was possible. I had primavera, seafood pasta, boiled dumplings, sliced tomatoes and fried eggplant. Sadly, that was all I could allow myself the night before a marathon.

Burt and I sat in folding chairs eating. A man with a gray goatee walked up and asked me if I was Burt Carlson—I’m pretty old, too. “No, but he’s right there,” I said pointing. He handed Burt a laminated copy of a page from the local paper, and walked away. Burt sat looking at it bemused—he hadn’t seen it until that moment. It was a story dated November—after Burt had registered for this year’s race. Twin headlines told the news—“Burt’s Coming Back”—and announced a profundity I wish I’d written: “The Human Body Was Made to Run.”

Next morning, the stroke of 5:15 would prove it.