Clutching my car keys, which I always carry in my right fist, I merged into a stream of runners flowing across the parking lot toward a dark field, and beyond that, converging into the bright, flowing throng of runners dammed up in the street before the starting line. I was cold in my shirt sleeves, but I found it warmer among the crowd. With my arms wrapped around my body and my legs dancing in place, I could tolerate the chill, the wait, the ticking moments. A couple of runners around me remarked on how cold I looked. “But you’ll warm up fast,” they assured me in a friendly tone. Or maybe it was really the Southern accent that pushed away the chill.
Time does tend to pass. That’s my mantra on long runs. The starting gun went off a couple of minutes late. I heard a reporter from the local news team explaining to viewers that a last-second fuse problem had caused the delay. I was hopping over the starting line, noting the new-style chip sensors suspended in a string above my head, when another miked voice intoned, “If a blown fuse is the only problem we have in a marathon …”
I breathed. I moved with the field of runners spreading out around me. I tried to coach myself: not too fast, not too slow. Not too much significance at any one moment. Not too much feeling. Steadiness. Calm. The night faded. The sky promised a clear morning. Happiness pricked at me. I wanted to embrace it.
Mile 1, mile 2. The sun tinged the world in gold. We ran past a fountain shooting up in a landscaped shopping complex. We turned down Ocean Boulevardwith its bank of palm trees and its pastel hotels and the new SkyWheel towering over the boardwalk to look out to sea.
Would it be marathon magic or pain? Would I be "recalled to life"* or fight despair? So many miles. I read the names of the hotels and the signs advertising vacation rentals. My body felt good. I was scared. I could see, as if I’d taken a ride on the SkyWheel: FDR was right about fear. A dark mass hovered somewhere between me and the sky, shifting and ephemeral like a haze of mosquitoes in summer. That was the real danger. I could give into it, let it swallow me. Or I could let the happiness in. It doesn’t always look like a choice. So that was the marathon magic. The dark mass remained visible a long time, but it weakened and faded. On the last stretch before the finish line, I couldn’t see it.
Moment by moment. Breath by breath. Sometimes the sun was in my eyes. Then came welcome shadow. Sometimes I pushed, then glided. Time does tend to pass. We ran by more fountains. Happiness never sprung up as freely as the sprays of water. But in the end, I did feel resurrected. I could smile into the sun and air and sea. The miles had been finite. The fear looked finite too.
*Awesome phrase courtesy of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
