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7 Well, only me and the forty thousand employees of the National Security
Administration.
8 I'd done San Francisco's famous Bay-to-Breakers run, seven and a half miles,
or about half a half-marathon. But that was thirty five years ago. It's easy
because for half of the race, you have to slow-walk because there are
initially so many contestants, observers, and wild costumes that the race
proceeds at a crawl, sometimes literally. The year I ran it, the B-to-B had
about 25,000 participants. It's about 50,000 today. Really. For years, I
mistakenly insisted that the race was named the Beta Breakers, beta being
the symbol in finance for the movement of an individual stock in accordance
with the movement of the overall market. That was when I first realized I
needed to put more distance between myself and my Wharton experience.
9 What also dominated my thoughts was an unshakable image of people
stepping over my prostrate body, probably lifeless, saying, There's number
1043. I saw him a little while ago. I didn't think he looked so good. To
which his buddy replies, Yeah, I saw him too . . . and he actually looks
worse now.
top hats and green vestments of all sorts and festoons of other
emerald miscellany, I arrived at the venue early. I'd gotten up at a
wee hour or maybe never been asleep at all.
For starters, I no idea what shoes to wear. I found an old pair
of athletic shoes that seemed to have more tread and cushioning
than the others sharing the same cardboard box, and decided at the
last minute to wimp out and I brought along a walking stick which
I'd broken and taped up, the missing plastic handle a casualty of my
trying to hit an obnoxiously aggressive pigeon in the park a few
weeks before. Really.
Number? Check. Half decent pair of shoes? Check. Broken
walking stick? Check. Ankle brace? Check. Common sense? MIA.
The crowd was sufficiently large that when I got to the
starting line the clock read 9.30. No fair! I am already nearly ten
minutes behind! How will I ever win? At once, walking as fast as I
could in a jammed crowd, I was already nearly ten minutes behind.
Then I watched as hundreds of people disappeared in front of me
and watched hundreds more continue to pass by. I had learned
long strides and I tried my best to keep up a steady pace and a
long stride. But within a couple of miles, I thought I was watching
every entrant in the race from the back side.
The Germantown half marathon, as it turned out, was a six
and a half mile walk, or run if you sere so inclined it seemed most
were, out to a local high school, a loop, and a equal length walk
back to the starting line, which would be transformed by then into
the finishing line. Unfortunately, this out-and-back format allowed
me to see the faces of virtually every entrant, as they all returned at
the high school and headed back, passing me going in the opposite
direction, on their return to the starting point. Depressing.
As I reached the parking lot of the high school and began to
circle its athletic fields for the return trip, I realized that I was
actually passing a couple of people. Mirable visu. I'd finished a half
of a half-marathon10 I picked up my meager pace. I'd made it half
10 A quarter of a full marathon: about six miles. My $100,000 plus Wharton
MBA is paying.
way, would not be the last finisher.11 So far I'd suffered only blisters
on my hands from my walking stick, and I was only moderately
exhausted. Why would I think of cancer when I was not only
undiagnosed, but already overwhelmingly self-congratulatory about
my achievement. A few moments later I realized that I was as far
from the finish as I would get and I either had to finish on my feet
or stick my thumb out. I kept walking.
Plus, I was carrying extra weight. It was me and my tumor.
Though it probably had only been around for a couple of years, it
was getting sizable, now perhaps like a peanut. So, not only did I
not train, I was carrying extra weight.
The walk was hard. I struck up a conversation with one guy
that I caught up with. We could easily talk; neither of us were
winded at the pace we were walking, slow and steady and as fast as
either of us could manage. He was from California, a techie with a
defense contractor, and had slowed down to wait for his brother
who lived in Memphis. I left them behind and later saw them cruise
by in a back BMW. They both dropped out of the race . . . style.
That meant two fewer people behind me and therefore that much
closer to finishing last. Dirty politics. I gotta pick up the pace.
Slowly I trudged on and eventually saw a substantial image in
front of me going in the same direction. He got closer as I
quickened my pace and lengthened my stride to catch him. As I
pulled along side, so to speak, I noticed that he was perhaps six feet
four inches tall and must have weighted two hundred and fifty
pounds. (That's a BMI12 of around 32, maybe even 34, and made
the gentleman decidedly obese by federal government standards.13)
How much further is it? he asked me. He was straining.
About five miles I answered, maybe less . . . maybe only
11 Whether I dropped out or not, I figured I could not finish last wither way.
12 Body Mass Index witch is the body mass divided by the square of the body
height. It's one way, a good way, of quantifying the amount of an individual's
tissue mass (bone, muscle, fat) to tell if they are underweight, normal weight,
overweight, or obese. Over 30 is obese.
13 And everyone else's.
four.. You can make it . . . don't worry . . . I'll walk with you a while.
I encouraged him as much as was possible, but it was a self-
reflective effort. I was talking to myself. I was the one who needed
encouragement. But the only person within sight was surprisingly
doing worse than I was.
Is there any other way in? he finally asked, after trudging
alongside me for a few minutes.
No, not really. But I talked to that cop back there a ways,
and he said that the route makes another loop back on itself in
about a mile. So, you could skip that loop, go straight in . . . it's up
here a ways. You could take a mile or two off . . . or more.
Where's that? I'm from Memphis . . . I don't know anything
about it out here.
I pointed ahead and indicated where the route would turn
and explained, When the route turns right, just go straight and the
finish line will be just up the hill about a mile down. You'll see it . . .
can't miss it. But if you've gone this far, you might want to finish.
You'll feel great about it.
I'm gonna stop and find a place to go to the bathroom. I'll
catch up with you. He was struggling and I wondered if his dark
skin made it more difficult in the southern spring heat. 14 I left him
behind, knowing that the worst I could finish was next-to-last.
Yippee. I'd might have shouted, Cancer be damned. But the
endoscopy performed and the biopsy taken, both only four months
earlier, my told me that the aircraft carrier-sized lump under my jaw
was benign, maybe an infection in a tooth and of no concern.
An open-back truck came by with an indifferent kid sitting on
the tail gate. As the truck rolled slowly by me, he made eye contact,
unemotionally nodded, and continued to reach out to the side and
pick up the orange cones that lined the path of the rout. Damn, no
more orange cones the rest of the way.
14 The early March average high temperature in Memphis is only in the low
to mid sixties, but it would be over seventy degrees that day, a relative scorcher
for an obese person on a ten mile hike.
I must be a mile, two, three from the finish line now. Fifteen
minutes later a police car pulled up next to the curb, twenty or
thirty feet away. Without rolling down his window he blasted my
ears with an announcement. Lord, he must have been shouting at
the top of his lungs as the roof-mounted speaker, next to his
flashing blue lights, blared in a police-announcement-like
monotone, The race is over. I repeat, the race is over. Without
breaking pace I looked up in front of me and turned around and
checked behind me. Not a soul in sight. Just me and the cop.
With no sense or humor or, apparently, irony - he re-blasted
my eardrums, so close that with five or six long steps I could have
touched his patrol car. The race is over. Please stay out of the
street. Please stay on the sidewalk. I repeat the race is over.
Lights flashing, he pulled slowly away, leaving me to walk alone the
miles left to get to the finish line. Where is Ben Stiller when you
need him? Shit, I knew the race was over. I hadn't passed a water
stand in an hour. They'd all been picked up. My obese friend had
disappeared. The streets were still cordoned off, so there was no
traffic . . . no cars, no trucks, no annoying police vehicles. Eerily
quiet. Just me walking along alone, by this time completely
exhausted and wonder with each step what the hell I was doing and
whether or not I could make it. I was beat. I was just me in the
silence, competing against myself.
The streets were still empty as I turned the corner to manage
a final five hundred yard stretch up a slight hill, which was Everest-
like to me at that point. I could see the big banner over the finish
line. As I got closer, I whispered an in audible wow . . . they had
kept the finish line open for me. So cool. They'd apparently known
someone, me of course, was still out there grinding away. Maybe
the police man or the orange-coneboy had said, Hey, there's this
old guy who's still out there walking. Except for him, that's it. And
they kept the computers on. As I slowly walked under the massive
finish line banner, a couple of volunteers clapped slowly and
deliberately, but earnestly and appreciatively. Good job, they
shouted. It felt like someone clapping at the opera twenty minutes
after the orchestra had packed up its instruments and left. The
singers had changed and were at a local bar having a post-
performance toddy. But someone, a blind man perhaps, sat in the
ornate theater slowing clapping . . . the punctuated applause
echoing eerily throughout.
Okay one of the race officials offered, turning to a couple of
others, that's it. A denouement if ever there was one. He's here.
he added like the last period in a Faulkner sentence, uncomfortable
because it should have come an hour before or not at all..
He graciously walked a few steps with me and apologized that
the complimentary Snickers, health bars, energy drinks and bananas
had been all packed up and had already been trucked off. I could
not have cared less. One of the volunteers bestowed a ribbon one
me. I bent over slightly and she reached out and placed the ribbon
cum bronze medal around my neck. I had finished.
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