Marathon Man (17 page)

Circling around Jamaica Pond in Jamaica Plain, I felt like I was suddenly making a connection with an ancient part of my being that had existed throughout time. A primal emotion lying dormant in my bones was released. My earliest ancestors ran in search of food and to escape predators. I no longer run for survival like them, but perhaps the traces from the past lived on in my DNA. I believe this biological need to move is felt more intensely in some than others, but I believe it's within us all.

With every step I took along the dirt path, the worries that had been nagging my mind drifted away like the butterflies I once chased as a child. In that moment, it didn't matter that I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Or how I was going to support myself. Or how I was going to pay the rent. All the usual troubles sailed on behind me.

For the next couple of months, I did nothing but run around the pond. At first it wasn't about distance or speed, but about finding satisfaction in the doing, in cultivating the spark. I wasn't frustrated to be starting all over. I was moving at a comfortable pace—or what I call “running within myself.” I was not chasing or strategizing or competing. It was enough to be on my way. Enough to be back on a path.

I was in the very beginning stages of becoming a long-distance runner. I needed to lay a foundation of fitness before I could move on to the advanced training methods I had learned from Amby. Of course, today it's called “building your base.”

Every morning, before I went out running, I set a course and an amount of time to run. I remember in those first few weeks going out and trying to run five miles at a quick pace, but I couldn't do it. I wasn't ready. A lot of runners make this mistake. They run too fast at the start. They forget the first step: building up the muscles in the heart so it can pump blood farther with less exertion. You can't take on the world with a weak heart. You need to cultivate its strength first. Did you know that the heart can grow twenty percent larger in size?

I started to keep a training log again so I could see my progress. Otherwise, it's too abstract. I gradually started to build my pace, strengthen my heart, increase my endurance. My movements became more efficient. My running form looked more natural. It brought me back to my former days of running, when I'd had some success in life. In a way, it brought me back to life, back to me, the real me, the one who was happy and carefree and in love with the world and its infinite possibilities. That's a feeling that you just can't get wheeling dead bodies to the morgue.

The loop around the pond made for easy, idyllic running. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but John “the Elder” Kelley had run the same loop, who knows how many hundreds of times, in the 1930s as he trained to become Boston Marathon champion in 1935. Who knows how many more trips he had to make around the tiny pond over the course of ten years to reclaim glory in 1945. Perhaps no fewer than his protégé Johnny Kelley had run in the 1950s in his personal quest to carry the mantle, which he did through the fifties, winning the Boston Marathon in 1957. I don't think Amby ever ran that loop, but in a way he did because just as a part of Kelley was in him when he ran, a part of my old college roommate was in me when I ran. That's the way it is with runners. That's the way it is with brothers.

Months of running the loop around Jamaica Pond gave me confidence to leave its safe confines and go out farther along the Emerald Necklace. Each time I ran, I felt that biological click go on. This never happened running around the indoor track of the YMCA. Here, in nature, all things were possible. I wondered to myself, Can I run up that hill that I see in the distance? Yeah, I think I can. I think I will. And with that, I'd veer off the path and start climbing to the crest. I was once again the Peter Pan adventurer of my youth! The fearless searcher! The wild blond rascal!

Day after day, I ran along the Emerald Necklace, slowly increasing my mileage over time. I went out seven miles one day, which meant seven miles back, and I'd think to myself, I'm going to keep going. I kept pushing myself to go farther out—nine miles, ten miles, eleven miles. Challenging myself to go farther still. I could feel my body and mind gaining strength with every mile. After a while, no distance felt impossible.

I got to the point where I was running once in the morning and once in the evening—like I'd seen Amby do. That's a lot in a way, but I had slowly built up to it. Some sports put heavy hours in, like swimming or gymnastics. With running, you don't. Even the top runners in the world don't. I never ran more than two hours a day.

In many ways, Ellen and I were a perfect match. She was of a practical, down-to-earth, friendly, and quiet nature. She always made sure I left the house with everything in my pocket, no matter what kind of rush I was in. Or she'd stick a hat on my head as I was heading out for a winter run. I'd come back, cold and spent, and Ellen would cook me a nice, warm meal. She possessed an earthy gentleness that endeared her to me. We were two young, lonely free spirits in the big city, finding refuge in each other. Ellen was my first real relationship, the first girl that I could say I truly loved.

We lived a very simple, low-key existence. Our apartment had once served as part of the servants' quarters of the building. Ellen had her job, so she was bringing home money, and the rent was almost nothing: one hundred and ten bucks a month. Our costs were low. We had no health care. We didn't have any kids. We had a cat. Sometimes I would meet Ellen as she was getting off the trolley, coming home from work. We would pick up dinner at the market. We didn't live too lavishly. Once in a while we'd go out to the movies. Or eat pizza over a friend's house.

My life was very basic and regimented, almost a militarylike situation. I'd wake up in the morning, maybe grab a cup of coffee, and in no time at all, I'd be running loop after loop around the leafy pond at a six- or six-and-a-half-minute pace. I'd run once in the morning and once again in the evening. I'd sleep ten hours a night, but wake up twice. The first time, around three a.m., to eat my fourth meal of the day and go to the bathroom. I'd stand at the refrigerator, chugging quarts of soda, milk, peach nectar mixed with ginger ale. I'd shovel food into my mouth. Oreo cookies, potato chips, pickles, Hostess Twinkies, macaroni and cheese, horseradish, tartar sauce, and mayonnaise, which I'd eat straight out of the jar with a big spoon. Sometimes I wondered if the real reason I ran so many miles every day was so I could eat like that, or if I ate like that so I could run so many miles.

I felt like I was making a comeback and it lifted me up to see the progress I was making. Ellen was not a runner herself, but I think she understood that going on long runs, twice every day, was something I needed to do for my peace of mind. She did occasionally inquire how the job search was going. But she never yelled at me for training all the time. Years later, she did tell
People
magazine: “When we were first going together and he would leave to run, I thought, ‘He'd rather do that than be with me?'”

Ellen never told me that was how she felt. But, looking back, I can see there was an element of selfishness in following my passion for running. Maybe every quest, no matter how good and heroic it may be, starts off kind of selfishly. Ultimately, Ellen supported my reawakened interest in running and for that I was thankful. I think she recognized that I was trying to do something positive, which was to quit smoking and get into shape. It's hard to criticize somebody for that.

Of course, most people back then had an easy time criticizing me for spending as much time as I did running. “Why do it?” they would ask. “You're not making money at it.” I didn't share the common viewpoint that an activity had little value if it didn't result in some financial gain. I championed the idea of doing things just for the sake of doing them, be it running outdoors or playing a song or painting a canvas or writing a love poem. I didn't want to live in a world where something as positive and uplifting as running in nature didn't have value. As a matter of fact, I refused to.

The past five years in America had been full of excitement, hope, and urgency but they hadn't allowed for many truly peaceful breaths. For some of us—those who had experienced the whirlwind of war, love, protest, purpose, revolt, joy, and madness in our early twenties—a desire to live a simple life swelled in our hearts. No more mass political movements, no more violent clashes with police, no more “fight the power.” Tend to your own garden. Like the Beatles said, let it be. For all of us hoping to recline our minds on peaceful shores, running was the perfect activity. After all, could there be a less mentally taxing activity? It's one foot in front of the other.

For all the good feelings my running along the Emerald Necklace generated inside me, it provoked anger and ridicule from the motorist passing by me on the Jamaicaway. Once, I felt an empty beer can whiz by my head. A couple of rowdy guys in a pickup truck on their way to work. This was nothing new. Getting heckled on runs. You'd hear stuff like, “Who are you running from?” or “Where's the fire?” or “Hey, fruitcake! Nice underwear!” Football was a real sport; running was for freaks and fairies. How could such a peaceful action—running down the road, communing with nature—ruffle the feathers of so many?

Not everybody was hostile toward runners, but the majority of people who saw me running alone through the park, in the middle of the day, did look at me suspiciously. They couldn't help but wonder, Why are you running? Why aren't you out looking for a job? I think they took offense at the idea of somebody escaping from their real problems. But what's so wrong with escape? Escape can be a wonderful thing.

Of course, I don't think my running was only about escaping from the pressures of life. For three years, I'd been drifting through the world only half alive. Everything felt like a life-and-death situation, a state of constant emergency, and in the hospital, many times it was. I liked zooming around the hospital and interacting with patients all day. But in a larger sense, it was strange to be in a perpetual state of motion and yet feel like I wasn't going anywhere. In that way, running wasn't an escape from life; rather, it was an embrace of it. As I bounded along the park trail, I wasn't sailing around in chaos. I was charging forward with purpose.

Running through the heart of the city, I thought about my sudden change in fortune. What if I hadn't met Ellen that night at Jack's Bar? What if I hadn't moved to Jamaica Plain with her? I'd always felt overwhelmed living in the center of downtown Boston. I felt much calmer living on the outskirts of the city. And of course I was a stone's throw away from this gigantic oasis of green amid the urban landscape.

Also, how lucky was it that I ended up doing my alternative service in Boston? After all, I could easily have done it in Newington or Hartford or any number of places. But it was here in Boston that I experienced the Boston Marathon for the first time. It practically passed outside my window. What if Jason and I hadn't driven back to Boston early that Sunday and I hadn't witnessed the grand spectacle with my own eyes? What if I had not been caught up in the race's mythical web?

I was suddenly given this chance to get back to running. That is, I had all the time in the world to run. Not to mention, I was now living across from the perfect running spot. I would wake up, throw on some sweats, and literally be running the dirt path along the pond five minutes later. Even though it was only 1.5 miles around the pond, I never tired of running lap after lap in the middle of nature.

From mid-October on, I was averaging one hundred miles per week around the Emerald Necklace. I had never run this much in my life, not even during my senior year of college, when I was at my peak as a runner. I never came close to achieving the weekly distances I was now.

I had entered a brand-new world as a runner; it was an exhilarating place to be. In September, I set a new high mark: 124 miles for the week. Why stop now?

I was driven, but not like most twenty-four-year-olds living in Boston. What drove them was making money and having a nice house and a good career. I was driven to run. I was this penniless athlete aiming for an ideal. It was like Plato and the perfect city, you know?

What the war had taken away from me was my motivation to run. After all, who cared about running when I might have to leave my country and family and seek refuge with the kiwi birds in New Zealand? But what the war also took from me was my freedom. Suddenly, I was required to find a job that fulfilled my alternative service duty or face prison. This life I was forced to live offered no room for a steady running routine. In that way, I lost the freedom that came from liberating myself from my troubled mind. Running was my way of stepping outside myself, of tolerating the human condition. I no longer had the chance to be a kid at play. My soul diminished. My world collapsed. I fell apart.

Once I started running around Jamaica Pond, those positive feelings came rushing back. I had been dead in places without even knowing it. I felt alive again. I felt hope. I don't think I could have stopped running each day in the park even had I wanted to. First of all, there was the sweet rush of the runner's high. Those endorphins raced through my brain, repairing the damage done. The war had screwed me up. The filth and noise and congestion from the city had screwed me up. Smoking and drinking had screwed me up. Taking bodies to the morgue had screwed me up. Being treated like a peon by administrators had screwed me up. Running in the park was a powerful form of recovery.

Here's what you have to understand: For runners, progress is the root of pleasure. While progress in life can be hard to see, sometimes impossible, all I had to do was open up my ten-cent running diary and peer inside. My physical evolution was clearly laid out before my eyes—where I was when I started, where I was now. It was a way of grabbing the reins of life: I ran five miles yesterday, I ran seven miles today, and next week I will run ten miles. The more work I put in, the stronger I became. I felt good. I felt fit. Now I was really tapping into my human potential. No substance on the planet can rival a rush like that.