OCR Text |
Show infidelity, the knowledge that I had failed. My parents drove through several states and all night to be at the marathon for me. We stayed in a hotel in downtown Columbus and went out for pasta the night before the race. Most of the marathon itself remains a blur; a few people talked to me, most people did not, and I concentrated on pretending that this was just another Saturday morning in Ann /Arbor. By mile twelve I never thought I would make it, the cereal I had eaten that morning felt like cement in my stomach and my legs were weak; by mile twenty, close to what most consider "the wall" I felt good enough to talk with neighboring runners, and by the end I was wondering if I could meet my goal of four hours. In the final half mile of the marathon, my dad popped out from the crowd to run with me. Although he was wearing dress shoes, long pants, and carrying a backpack, he kept pace. We talked some. He remarked on how little I breathed, surprised by my level , \ of fitness, one of the few times I have ever impressed him. When I get back to Ann Arbor, I rewarded my efforts with a day off from running. A foggy morning in October, early, before the sun had risen above the trees that eclipse the town of Ann Arbor, I set out to run. Those days I ran in the morning, minutes after my alarm had sounded, before my body had stirred enough to object. Some months from then, in January and February, when too much snow covered the ground or the wind chill threatened, I would run the quarter-mile track in the campus rec building, weighing 228 |