Eighteen and Ancient

Life and death and running

We joked around about the times we were hoping to run before the race. It was part of the way the top runners would psych out the younger, less experienced competition. We were not standout runners yet, but we could hold our own against the average competition a small high school invitational could muster up. We stepped up to the line, able to view the faces of all the other runners with the waterfall start.

With the crack of the gun and the thunder of footsteps that followed, we quickly pulled ahead of the pack. He was the older and stronger runner. I tried desperately to keep him in touch, but he slowly pulled away in the second lap of the 800, each stride leaving me farther and farther behind. The fabled monkey jumped on my back with 200 meters to go. There is no moving up in a race with the monkey on your back. All you can do is hold on. He finished in first as I struggled to hold on to second place.

That runner is dead now. His name was Ben. I never knew his last name. He was killed in a car accident. I didn’t find out until almost two years later. Our whole lives had been before us and we took each day for granted. And while we used to race each other against the clock, our lives were racing away from us, Ben’s faster than he could have ever imagined.

* * *

My younger brother has a shirt from the memorial race for Ben. He had run in it last cross-country season. The name on his shirt means nothing to him. It means a whole person to me.

* * *

I once read that no one is older than someone who is about to die. Ben was only two years older than me, but he might as well had been seventy years older. Could I be older than my ninety-seven-year-old great-grandfather? Can a newborn be the oldest human being on earth? Maybe age does not determine how old you truly are. Maybe the oldest person on earth is the person who is next in line to die.

* * *

Coach O. hands out an award at the Cross-Country banquet each year honoring the runners who were able to run below 26 minutes for an 8k the past season. It is named after a former runner at Cedarville. He was killed on the day of a meet while he was riding his motorcycle to a football game afterwards.

What would it be like to be told one of my teammates was dead, to know that the human being that I had run 10.5 miles with the day before was no longer alive? It is a thought I cannot dwell on for long.

* * *

Some days while we are out running we feel eternal, invincible. Momentarily the chains of gravity are broken as we fly horizontally across the landscape. This is our craft and we are the master artists. Each step is a beautiful stroke of a paintbrush or a perfectly constructed chord of a symphony. We have filled “the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run”. We feel as if we will be faster, stronger, fitter every day. Our youth has not yet run its course.

All of us know, somewhere in the back of our minds, that this will come to an end one day. One day we will stop getting faster and stronger. One day we will pull a hamstring and not be able to recover from it in a matter of days. One day we will no longer be running. But today we pull worn-out shoes over our callused feet for just one more chance to create something beautiful.