recently got this via email. it takes a few minutes, but it's well worth the read. enjoy... Runners
by Roger Hart
We ran through blizzards, thunderstorms, freezing rain, covered bridges,
creeks, campgrounds, cemeteries, city parks, parking lots, a nuclear
power
plant, county fairs, and, once, a church service. We were chased by
goats,
geese, a crazed ground hog, guards (the nuclear power plant), a
motorcycle
gang, an armed man in a pickup, a sheriff's deputy, and dogs both fierce
and
friendly. We ran when two feet of snow covered the roads and when the
wind-chill was thirty below. We ran when it was eighty degrees at seven
in
the morning. We ran on streets, sidewalks, highways, cinder tracks, dirt
roads, golf courses, Lake Erie beaches, bike trails, across yards and
along
old railroad beds. Seven days a week, twelve months a year, year after
year.
During the hot days of July and August, Ed ran without shirt or socks; I
always wore both. Norm ran with a screw in his ankle and joked that it
was
coming loose. Ed was faster going downhill; I was better going up. The
three
of us met at a race and became training partners, competitors, best
friends.
We ran together on Saturday mornings, usually a twenty-mile run along
the
shore of Lake Erie or a twenty-two-mile route over hilly country roads
near
Ashtabula. We ran thousands of miles and more than a dozen marathons
together, but most of the time we ran alone.
We gave directions to lost drivers, pushed cars out of snowbanks, called
the
electric company about downed lines and the police about drunks. We
saved a
burlap bag full of kittens about to be tossed off a bridge, carried
turtles
from the middle of the road, returned lost wallets, and were the first
on
the scene of a flipped pickup truck.
We ran the Boston Marathon before women were allowed to enter and before
the
Kenyans won. We were runners before Frank Shorter took the Olympic gold
at
Munich, before the running boom, nylon shorts, sports drinks, Gortex
suits,
heart monitors, running watches, and Nikes.
We ate constantly, or so it seemed. My favorite midnight snack was
cookie
dough or cold pizza. Ed enjoyed cinnamon bread, which he sometimes ate a
loaf at a time. Norm downed buttered popcorn by the bucketfuls and
Finnish
cookies by the dozen. We all loved ice cream and drank large vanilla
shakes
two at a time.
Still, friends said we were too thin. They thought we looked sick and
worried something was wrong.
We measured our lives in miles down to the nearest tenth, more than one
hundred miles a week, over four hundred a month, four thousand a year,
sometimes more.
The smells! From passing cars: pipe tobacco, exhaust fumes, and
sometimes
the sweet hint of perfume. From the places we passed: French fries,
bacon,
skunk, pine trees, dead leaves, cut hay, mowed grass, ripe grapes, hot
asphalt, rotten apples, stagnant water, wood smoke, charcoal grills,
mosquito spray, roadkill. And from ourselves: sunscreen and sweat.
Some people smiled and waved. A few whistled. Once or twice a woman
yelled
from a passing car, said we had nice legs. Others, usually teenage boys
in
sleek, black cars, yelled obscenities, called us names, gave us the
finger,
and mooned us. They threw firecrackers, smoldering cigarettes, pop cans,
half-eaten ice cream cones, beer bottles (both full and empty), squirted
us
with water, drove through puddles to spray us, swerved their cars to
force
us off the road, swung jumper cables out the window to make us duck, and
honked their horns to make us jump.
We saw shooting stars, a family of weasels, a barn fire, a covered wagon
heading west, and a couple making love in a pickup; we ran with deer on a
golf course, jumped a slow-moving train to get across the tracks, hid in
ditches during lightning storms, slid across an intersection during a
freezing rain, and dived into Lake Erie to cool off in the middle of a
hot
run. We drank from garden hoses, gas station water fountains, pop
machines,
lawn sprinklers and lemonade stands. We carried toilet paper, two
quarters,
sometimes a dog biscuit.
We were offered rides by The Chosen Few motorcycle gang, old ladies,
drunks,
teenagers, truckers, a topless dancer (not topless at the time but
close,
real close), and a farmer baling hay, but we never accepted a single
one. We
argued about the dancer.
We were nervous before races and said we'd quit running them when we
weren't. We won trophies, medals, baskets of apples, bottles of wine,
windbreakers, T-shirts, pizza, pewter mugs, running suits, shoes,
baseball
caps, watches, a railroad spike, and, once, five hundred dollars. Often
we
didn't win anything, although we never looked at it that way.
Ed liked to race from the front and dare other runners to catch him. I
preferred to start a little slower, stalk those whose inexperience or
eagerness took them out too fast, sneak up on them around twenty miles
when
they began to look over their shoulders. I felt like a wolf, and they
were
the prey. When I passed, I pretended not to be tired, and I never looked
back.
Our goal was to qualify for the Olympic Trials Marathon, to run faster
and
farther, to beat other runners.
Did we ever have runner's high? Didn't it get boring? What did we think
about? Why did we always look so serious?
Sometimes. Sometimes. Running. We didn't know we did.
One spring day it rained so hard the road was one giant ankle-deep
puddle,
and Ed was huffing and our feet were splashing and it struck us funny.
We
laughed until we collapsed, tears and rain running down our faces. We
joked
about the time Ed had to pee and caught himself showering a snake's
head,
the time we got lost during a winter storm and refused to turn around,
and
the time we ran by Don King's ranch and were mistaken for two boxers.
(We
never understood how anyone could mistake our skinny arms for a boxer's,
but
we loved it, too.)
We felt guilty about the time we ran into a church service being held in
the
middle of a covered bridge, and we were too tired, too inconsiderate,
too
stubborn to turn around, so we sprinted down the center aisle, dodging
the
two men with collection plates, and ran out the other end of the bridge
while the congregation sang "Praise God from whom all blessings flow
..."
And the dogs! The ones that tried to follow us home and the ones that
attacked us. Take the time Ed, Norm, and I were surrounded on a dirt
road by
half a dozen blood-thirsty, snarling, circling canines, each begging for
a
bite. We picked up rocks, stood with our backs to one another, and
yelled at
the dogs, yelled for help, yelled for anything. Then Ed threw a rock,
not at
the dogs but at the farmhouse where the dogs had been sleeping on the
front
porch. The rock hit the aluminum siding. Bang! Like a gun going off.
An old man came to the door. Looked at us, looked at his dogs, and I
thought
we'd done it now, and he'd lift a shotgun to his shoulder, shoot us, and
let
the dogs have what was left.
"Harvey, Louie, Princess, Tucker," the old man called. The dogs trotted
back
to the porch, and we raced down the road.
But another time we only yelled at a growling Doberman, told it to go
home,
and the owner jumped in his pickup, chased us down the dirt road,
swearing
he'd shoot us for bothering his dog. We ran through a field and across a
four-lane highway, circled back through the woods, hid beneath the
underpass, and then jogged into a gas station, where we celebrated our
escape with ice-cold Cokes.
I was bitten by a Dalmatian, a terrier, a cocker spaniel, and a
red-haired,
knee-high mutt. Three of the dogs escaped after drawing blood, but I
caught
the mutt in mid-air and threw it over my shoulder as its teeth clamped
down
on my arm. The dog sailed into a telephone pole headfirst and fell to
the
ground, knocked unconscious. The owner, ignoring the blood running down
my
arm and dripping onto the sidewalk, screamed at me for killing her dog.
But
when she stroked the dog's head, it jumped up and bit me again.
Or the time a sheriff's deputy stopped his cruiser to protect us from a
German shepherd as large as the Poland China hog in a nearby field. The
dog
jumped through the open window and landed on the deputy's lap, and,
while
they wrestled in the front seat, we ran, afraid of what might happen if
either ever caught up with us.
We found pliers, purses, golf balls, bolt cutters, billfolds, money
(once,
over two hundred dollars, returned to an eighteen-year-old boy--no
reward,
no thanks), tape cassettes, CDs, sunglasses, school books, porn
magazines, a
Navaho ring, car jacks, a fishing pole, a pair of handcuffs (no key), an
eight ball, and a black bra (36C).
We ran farther and faster. We sprinted up long steep hills by the Grand
River until we staggered and our heart rates exceeded the two hundred
twenty
minus our age that doctors said was possible. We ran intervals on a dirt
track: twenty quarter-miles in under seventy seconds, the last lap in
fifty-six flat. We got light-headed, our hands tingled, and sometimes
blood
vessels in our eyes ruptured from the effort.
We ran because it beat collecting stamps, because we were running
towards
something, because we were running away, because we were all legs, lungs
and
heart, because we were afraid of who or what might catch us if we
stopped.
One winter, while running twice a day, I was on my way home from a
seven-mile run, and I couldn't remember if it was morning or night, if
when
I finished I would shower and go to work or shower and go to bed. I
looked
at the horizon and the stars, the passing cars, and the lighted barns
for a
clue, but I couldn't figure it out. Ed often said he once went out for a
run
and bumped into himself coming back from the previous one.
We lost toenails and we pulled muscles. We suffered frostbite,
hypothermia,
heat exhaustion, sunburn, blisters, dehydration, and tendonitis. We were
stung by bees, bitten by black flies, and attacked by red-winged
blackbirds.
Sometimes, after a long run or a speed workout, or after a marathon, our
legs would be so sore, the Achilles so inflamed, that we could barely
walk,
and we'd limp or shuffle painfully when going from the couch to the
refrigerator or from the front door to the mailbox.
We treated aches with ice and heating pads, or soaked our legs in DMSO,
sometimes in Epsom salts and hot water. We tried medical doctors,
surgeons,
chiropractors, acupuncturists, podiatrists, sports therapists, trainers
and
quacks. We were given shots of novocaine and cortisone, told to take
ibuprofen, Tylenol, and aspirin. We were warned that we were ruining our
knees, our hips, damaging our feet, breaking down too much blood, that
we
would suffer arthritis and degenerative joints.
But sometimes it was like floating, like sitting on top of a pair of
legs
that you didn't think would ever get tired or slow down. It was like the
legs were yours and like they weren't. It was like being part animal, a
running, flying animal. A horse, a bird. It was like feet kissing the
pavement and effortless strides, the body along for the ride. It was
like
sitting in Ed's '67 Corvette, that monster engine gulping high-octane
fuel
and turning 6000 rpms, your foot ready to pop the clutch. Like freedom
and
invincibility. When we ran around corners, we were jets sweeping in
formation.
We all had a resting pulse in the low forties and body fat of seven
percent
or less. I was six foot two, raced at a hundred and forty-eight pounds,
and
went through a pair of shoes every six weeks.
Once, I experienced chest pains, a sharp stab beneath the ribs. A
Saturday
morning, twenty-two mile run. Seven steep hills. We raced up the first
hill
to find out if it was my heart or not and when I did not drop, we raced
up
the second and third. After six miles the pain eased off, and Ed said if
it
had been a heart attack, it must have been a mild one. Thousands of
miles
later, a doctor unfamiliar with a runner's heart sent Ed to the
emergency
room where he was poked, prodded, hooked up, and given oxygen until Ed
said
enough was enough, pulled the IV and ran home. Two weeks later he set an
age-fifty record for the mile in a local meet.
Although we ran faster and faster, we never ran fast enough. We failed
to
qualify for the Olympic Trials. Still, four times we drove for hours and
slept in our cars to watch others compete for the three Olympic spots.
Then, just as we once stalked other runners, time stalked us. We began
looking over our shoulders and thinking about the marathons we had run
instead of thinking about the next race. We slowed down. Our bodies
balked
at hundred-mile weeks, and it took longer to recover from a hard run.
Sometimes when the weather was bad--very hot was always worse than very
cold--we took a day off. Sometimes we would skip a day because we were
sore
or tired. We stopped giving the finger to those who ran us off the
roads. We
gained five, seven, ten pounds. More.
Now, Ed has a granddaughter; Norm has "screw pains," and I have a
retirement
clock and deformed toes. We've turned gray, lost hair, and joined the
AARP.
We run twenty-five, thirty miles a week. From time to time, we race, no
marathons but shorter races, three, four miles, maybe a 10K. We measure
our
lives in days, months, and years.
Ed and Norm still live in Ohio; I moved to North Carolina, then to
Minnesota. We no longer run together, but we keep in touch and reminisce
about the time the Star Beacon ran a front-page article about a group of
snowmobilers who had ridden nearly ten miles on a day when the
temperature
was five below. We had passed them on our way to a twenty-mile run. We
argue
about who threw the rock at the house, whose fault it was we got lost,
and
which one of us the topless dancer really wanted to take for a ride.
We complain that we're running slower than we once did and make jokes
about
timing ourselves with calendars and sundials.
Sometimes when we're running we'll spot other runners ahead of us and
the
urge to race comes back, and we'll do our best to catch them. Last fall
while I was running in a park, I overheard a high school cross-country
coach
urge his runners to pass "the old, gray-haired guy." I held them off for
nearly a mile although it almost killed me, and, when I had completed
circling the park, I ran by the coach and said, "Old guy, my ass."
But my ass is getting old along with all the other parts. When I
sometimes
fantasize about one more marathon, the fantasy seldom lasts more than a
day.
Fast marathons, hundred-mile weeks, ten-kilometer races under thirty-one
minutes are things of the past.
And what did we learn from running seventy-thousand miles and hundreds
of
races, being the first to cross the finish line and once or twice not
crossing it at all, those runs on icy roads in winter storms and those
cool
fall mornings when the air was ripe with the smell of grapes, our feet
softly ticking against the pavement?
We learned we were alive and it felt good. God, it felt so good.
© Copyright 2001 Roger Hart. This work first appeared in Natural Bridge,
the
literary magazine of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
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