In the days following the Boston Marathon bombing, I read several well-written stories about why amateur runners train for hours each week to prepare for grueling races. Why suffer for so long for so little recognition? It’s a good question, and reminded me of a phone call my dad made to me more than 10 years ago.
“I want to run a marathon,” he said. “And I want you to run it with me.”
At the time I was studying at the University of Montana, but had just landed a summer internship in Spokane. I would be living at home for the first time in three years and, since I agreed to this idea, would be spending much of my free time training. But I hadn’t yet realized the scope of such a commitment.
Four or five days a week during that summer, Dad would wake me up, often before dawn, and we would lace up our shoes and begin our morning run. Five-mile runs turned into eight-mile runs and eight-mile runs turned into 12-mile runs. We spent hours together jogging side by side, chatting until we ran out of breath and then just listening to the sound of pounding pavement.
Once, on a rare day I was running alone, I called Dad collect to pick me up in a grocery store parking lot. My body simply broke down and I couldn’t make it home. Exhausted and dehydrated, I questioned why we were doing this. What’s the point? But the next day we woke up and continued our morning ritual.
The race was in Victoria, British Columbia, and a friend of mine from college decided she also wanted to run it. So there we were, at the starting line, three novice runners doubting that we had prepared well enough to finish this thing (maybe that was just me). The gun sounded.
At about 10 miles our group separated. And at 20 miles I thought I was going to collapse. My pace had slowed. The numbness in my legs that had been hiding the pain for the last couple hours had lifted. Every step was another reason to stop. And then I saw him, a man with a grimace on his face and a stagger in his stride – exactly how I imagined I looked.
“How you doing?” I asked.
He gave me the answer I was looking for: “Awful.”
“Me too.”
And the next six miles were awful. But I ran the whole way – stride for stride with a stranger who, like me, didn’t think he was going to finish.
I watched my dad, who had barely run at all until five months prior, proudly finish. I watched my friend cross the finish line and burst into tears, largely because her family wasn’t there to see it. None of us had ever run that distance and we completed the race with the group that included mostly first-timers.
In the aftermath of the bombing, several writers cited Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon in 1967, who wrote: “If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.”
She’s right. It’s a place where spectators cheer wildly for strangers, even for those who finish in 1,170th place like I did. In fact, they may cheer a little louder for the slower runners who are obviously struggling. And, somehow, those cheers make all those hours spent training worth it.
After last week’s bombing, Ezra Klein with the Washington Post wrote, “This won’t be the last time we gather at the finish line to marvel how much more we can take than anyone ever thought possible.”
He’s right. Only there will likely be more of us gathered there now.