Hindsight: Part II

The beauty in this sport is that you never lose anything you can’t re-gain. Other athletic endeavors are composed of cutting edge moments of opportunity. 4th Quarter Mayhem; Penalty Shot Overtimes; 9th inning bases loaded and down by one run. They all express a sense of singular opportunity.

Ask any competitive team-sport athlete where he was when he dropped the fly ball. What stadium the hockey player struck the post at during a breakaway. A basketball player could eloquently describe the distinct odor of the parkay when he missed the buzzer shot.

Running has none of these. Everything you have, and everything you do is left on the road, or in the muffled wood. It exists for a nano-second and then it is gone forever. Races are won by increments of time that have no relevance in any other sport. If a marathoner can outlast a fellow competitor and beat him by .0092 seconds, I challenge any official, in any other game, to evaluate a play within the same frame of time. It’s mechanically impossible.

The late Dr. George Sheehan once wrote that he had given up thousands of things for his running. None of which was a sacrifice.

I raise these points only to describe what it’s like regain something I thought I had lost. When you enjoy yourself and your fellows to a degree of insomnia, it is hard to want anything more. So naturally one begins to realize what they have lost. The thousands of gains a man reaps in a day can instantly vanish if he has lost a single thing. This is why it is crucial to reflect on the fortunes, the privileges, and the inherent character that defines us. For it builds up so very tall, that a stiff wind could swiftly extinguish its fortitude.

I thought I had lost a place I held in sacrosanct. I knew it was there. It was not going to have waste committed upon it, for it was conserved and protected land. But conservation is only as good as the distance between its’ patrons. Witness the open-market; If every soul in the western hemisphere went to the same store to purchase their daily dosage of contentment, I doubt the store would exhibit the same traits it vends. Three is a crowd. Familiarity can breed contempt.

Distance running has a unique trait. After 6 miles of distance run, the mind enters its’ most humanistic state. Antagonisms are trampled and disagreements are happily rectified.

Armed with such an absolute truth, I cannot lose anything. Running is now, what it was then. It is the same earth. The same water. I explored it with people and shared feelings that forged what we have became, and what we still are. One by one they follow a path I ran so many times before. learned what Zatopek meant when he said “We are different, in essence, from other men.”

I learned what was dedication, and what is the marathon.