Posted: January 19, 2006

Running: The Gift - A Runner’s Story

Chapter One

The top step sagged under their weight as he watched the landlord brush aside the cobwebs and open the apartment door. The creak of the hinges did little to forewarn him of the rank odor about to escape from the small room and assault his senses.

“Jesus, this place stinks,” said the runner as he walked across the doorstep.

“What do you expect?” asked the old landlord chewing on the moistened stub of an unlit cigar. “Lifestyles of the rich and famous for four hundred bucks a month?”

There was no reason to dispute the point as he looked over the studio apartment. After a quick survey of the cracked paint, stained carpeting, and yellowed linoleum, he grudgingly admitted the humble dwelling was an undeniable fit for his meager belongings.

“It’s perfect. Reminds me of Hef’s mansion.”

The landlord looked at him quizzically before responding. “And don’t forget, Mr. Brett Rodgers,” he said as he looked at the application, “rent is due the first of the month...and oh yeah, no parties either.”

“Not even for me and one and a half of my closest friends?”

He knew he wouldn’t be living there long...eight, nine months tops he had estimated. With sixteen credits left before getting his masters degree in exercise physiology, he was set to graduate from the University of Milwaukee by the fall. He had come to view his latest re-location as another regretful passage in his life that he would weather just as he had done so many times before. But deep down there wasn’t a whisper of a doubt in his mind that he was destined to leave this town as inconspicuously as he had arrived. When he heard the winter swells howling outside the window, he wondered where those very same winds of fate would blow him in the future.

He climbed down the back stairwell and felt the cold blast of a January snowfall hit him squarely in the face. The Wisconsin winter was in full force and he found it hard to take a full breath. He laughed out loud as he walked toward his car in the back lot. “I look like the damn Beverly Hillbillies moving into town,” he said looking at the snow-covered mattress attached firmly to the roof of his rusted Civic. He remembered the shaky ride he had taken from Ohio and was ultimately grateful the car had at least gotten him to Milwaukee in one piece. After a pensive look at the band-aids he had stuck on the balding tires in a moment of whimsy, it suddenly dawned on him the car was a parallel of himself—a little beat up but still running.

With his frozen breath hanging in the air he started to unpack his humble personal treasures from the old vehicle. Even working alone he knew the three suitcases of clothes and boxes wouldn’t take him long. He struggled with the cardboard boxes one by one and felt the familiar burn in his legs as he climbed the steps. He gladly welcomed the sensation and he was more than ready to let even the simplest of workouts begin.

The front door squeaked to a close behind him and soon his cold hands rifled through the largest box. He carefully pulled out a cardboard tube and slowly slid out the contents as if it was a family heirloom. It was the one thing he wanted to see at this moment and he needed to know if it had survived the daylong trip. He unrolled the old dog-eared poster and spread it out on the bare floor before looking intently at the picture of the runner in flight and its underlying caption.

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift,” he read aloud. The legendary distance runner Steve Prefontaine had spoken the sentence over thirty years ago, but to the runner, the statement was still as meaningful as the day it had been recorded. He smoothed out the poster and carefully tacked it on the wall. “It’s just you and me my man, you and me.”

In his mind, Prefontaine had always been the gold standard for United States distance runners because of both his record setting times and unyielding desire to win. But as painful as it was to admit his own shortcomings, he knew that so far he had barely scratched the surface in truly utilizing his own gifts. The unrelenting burning in his gut told him the stay in Milwaukee was his last chance at fulfilling the promise he had so far squandered recklessly. After admiring the lone wall decoration, he took a deep breath and picked up a permanent magic marker from the box. Under the poster he wrote directly on the wall the day’s date.

“Happy freakin’ New Year,” he said. He moved to the far end of the peeling wall and continued writing in bold letters, “Olympic Trials - August 10: Baton Rouge”. He felt his hand clench the pen harder when he inked in “5000 meters -- 13 minutes 25 seconds”. He had been taught long ago that a goal was just pissing in the wind until it was written down. After he stepped back slowly from the wall he admired his artwork. “There’s a lot of space between now and then. Let’s see what we can fill it with.” He considered the answer to his own question as he dragged the wet mattress into the corner of the room. While looking at all of his worldly belongings piled up haphazardly in a heap the thoughts drifted through his head...a running gypsy...long distance white trash...a bum on the run...

“Snap!” the rubber band around his wrist echoed in the room. The tingling skin was the runner’s reminder to himself not to let the errors of the past have a hold on his future, and like one of Pavlov’s dogs, he had decided to reward any negativity with a jolt of self-inflicted pain. He had vowed the race he was now entering was a new one, and from this day forth would be only laden with positive thoughts.

He stretched out on the well-traveled mattress and thought of his checkered past. He drifted back to the glory days of high school in Connecticut where he had recorded a record time of four minutes and four seconds in the mile run. He remembered the feverish recruiting battle fought between the elite running programs of Stanford, Arkansas, and Colorado as they lobbied for his talents. Yet, it was the nearby campus of the University of Connecticut that seemed a natural fit, and after signing a letter of intent he was immediately hailed as the savior of a struggling track program. The “golden boy” he was lovingly called by the university press as they fawned over the new recruit. The seniors even took to calling him “Midas” to never let him forget the high expectations that he was destined to carry on his lean shoulders. When his first year concluded with third place in the conference championships and the “freshman of the year” award, everything was right on schedule.

He could still hear the ring of the phone call that would forever change the smooth course he was on. He automatically closed his eyes as if to snuff out the memory, but he still could not avoid re-living the searing pain he experienced when his mother told him his father had suffered a heart attack. He didn’t make it, her quivering voice stated painfully. His father had been both his high school coach and the one person who helped him make any sense of disorder in his life. And now he was gone. His disorientation to her words and the immediate sensation of confusion multiplied exponentially when his mother’s sobs echoed over the phone lines.

He thought of the funeral and the sense of estrangement and coldness he felt towards his mother. The emotional isolation he had developed toward her for the last five years only intensified when she arrived at the wake in a decidedly inebriated state. Just as he had done countless times before, he justified her behaviour to the throng of well-wishers who had come to pay their last respects. He had long ago come to terms with his parent’s divorce when they had separated over her drinking, but since then had only maintained minimal contact with his mother. As painful as it had been, he had come to the hard-edged conclusion that it was best to let her live alone in a seemingly perpetual alcohol induced haze.

He remembered how the color of the campus had taken on a decidedly different hue when he returned to take summer courses and continue his training. The months drifted along uneventfully, but he felt a gradual loosening of the emotional connection towards the campus he had spent the prior nine months acquiring. The daily run through the parks and trails was still a constant in his life, but the zeal for training had already began to fragment imperceptibly. The carefree nature of the collegiate nightlife was soon a given on his daily agenda, and the beckoning of the lights from the pub windows seemed to call to him just as powerfully as the nectar did to the butterflies that fluttered through the fields during his midday runs.

He once again ran cross country in the fall with the supposed intention of building strength for the spring track, but as the months passed there was a slow erosion of the necessary self discipline. The parties, the girls, the good times drew him in deeper and he knew anything was his for the taking. In those mornings that he woke up in his own bed he would still squeeze in the obligatory miles, but it wasn’t long before both his running and studies began to suffer. He could still recall the pounding of his head in the morning where his runs would wait for a few hours...if they came at all. He was just out having fun he justified. Not a drunk like his mother.

He performed adequately in the winter indoor track season, but without the proper base of miles, he began to get injured. Throbbing shins, inflamed achilles, sore knees...just like a car in need of maintenance he began to break down at the most inopportune of times. His coaches assumed it was just the normal wear and tear that distance runners undergo, but deep down the collegian knew better. When the spring brought the indoor season he continued to experience various injuries and the coaches began to hear whispers of his barroom exploits. He remembered one morning, deep in the throes of a hungover state, being called into the coach’s office where he successfully fought to reassure them of the exaggeration of the tales.

He rested his heels on the wall of the apartment and absently kneaded the egg-sized knot of scar tissue in the back of his left hamstring. The memory was still fresh in his mind of seeing himself standing on the bar stool to “load the cannon” with a shot of Jack Daniels. The exhortations of the surrounding crowd still rang in his ears as they urged him to down the rust-colored liquid. He remembered throwing his head back to swallow the contents of the shot glass and the resulting unexpected fall through the air as the stool buckled under his weight. Upon awaking in the local hospital, he was confronted by a gray haired physician that informed him of his battered condition. A “severe concussion” the doctor had called it, but he knew that was the least of his worries. The fall had caused a major tear in his left hamstring and would eliminate any running for the next few months.

He could still feel the crutch digging in his left armpit as he hobbled to the coach’s office. “A lush...a damn lush,” his coach had called him. “A waste of talent. A waste of a scholarship.” He wasn’t stripped of the scholarship, but when his grades continued to plummet the decision was soon made for him.

He started to feel like a nomad and wandered from college to college accumulating credits, but never finding a permanent home. In his mind’s eye he still emotionally linked each school to the fastest performance he had attained during his short lived attendance. After Connecticut he transferred to nearby Boston College, where he ran a 4:02 mile until in the “best interests of all parties” he switched schools again. He resurfaced at tiny Southeastern University where he teased his newest starry eyed coaches with a personal best of four minutes flat. But after violating team rules and multiple missed practices, he left the campus by so called “mutual agreement”. His latest move ended at the grounds of Kent State University where on a whim he began to test the difficulties of 5000 meter event. He could still remember the day the track gods aligned the stars and allowed him to beat the Olympic qualifying standards by a scant two seconds. His ensuing celebration resulted in a drunk and disorderly charge that again stripped him of the opportunity to compete on university soil.

Interspersed among the increasingly rare solid performances, he recalled the agony of a series of crash and burn races. “Consistency breeds success” his father used to say, and he knew he was a poster boy for the flip side. Even with all of his undisciplined ways the sporadic solid performances of the talented runner still landed him notice in the monthly periodical, Track and Field News. The magazine was the runner’s own bible and the mere listing of his name spurred him on to increased training. But the unavoidable lure of the neon bar lights and the resulting lack of consistent training assured him of only intermittent success.

He remembered trying to make sense of his Kent State predicament and the acknowledgement that once again a move was imminent. When the phone rang that day he recalled the pain of another slurring phone call from his incoherent mother. After hanging up on her once again, he bolted out the door and by sheer habit walked toward the local running store to sift aimlessly through the discount shoe bin. As he waded through the bargain shoes, he looked up toward the old poster as if it was calling to him from the wall. Although he knew it to be irrational, the three decade old quote from the famed runner seemed to be speaking directly to him and the directionless path he was on. The desperation in his voice convinced the salesperson the poster was better off with a new owner.

He had since been sober for three months and slowly felt the old power returning to his twenty-six year old legs. So here I am, he thought...living an uncertain future in an unknown town.

“I think I need a run,” he said aloud.

All Rights Reserved, Paul Maurer, 2006 PCM / Lulu Publishing (256 Pages) - Posted with permission

To Order: The Gift - A Runner’s Story

Subscribe to the Runner's Web Weekly Digest