Having embraced an interest in long distance running, Stephen had spent time watching some of the marathon qualifying competitions building up for the Olympic Summer Games the following year. It was both impressive and inspiring. But he simply couldn’t relate to someone who ran at that level; to run full speed for a marathon distance. In his view there was no association between what he was now doing and the unimaginable display of athleticism performed by what was clearly Human 2.0.
Still, he had enjoyed watching runners compete at such a high level. He was particularly impressed by the style and coordination of the race start. Even though their marathon run pace was faster than his all-out sprint, the Olympians had opened the race with a grace not unlike a herd of gazelle taking off in unison. Each had their strategic paths laid before them as if guided by imaginary lines telling each runner where they would go straight and where they would pass another runner without disturbing the herd’s stride. Stephen had wondered about how the herd would move on the morning of his race. Certainly the fastest of the gazelle would lead from the start. The rest would be farther behind but the unison effort of the herd would no doubt still be set in place as a universally accepted truth. Every runner knew where they were supposed to be. The unspoken professional understanding would create an orderly fashion so as to provide inspiration and motivation to the other herd members. Though tortoises when compared to the Olympians, his marathon peers would simply fall into the herd mentality and gracefulness would prevail.
Gazelles my ass!
This chaos was nothing close to the graceful herd he had envisioned. Stephen shifted along the road, dodging midstride collisions with other runners as they cut across him from either side. The organization and discipline of the herd looked more like someone had just dropped a firecracker in a room of sleeping cats. With the field beginning to space out, runners blindly darted in all directions at varying rates of speed and disorientation. Stephen could see they were yearning to break free of the crowd and would rush to fill pockets of available space which opened before them. They were as aggressive as water flowing into a crevasse, launching themselves without regard and then immediately looking for the next opening. Stephen was pretty sure he saw someone running in the opposite direction and the lady tailgating behind him was so close she seemed to be trying to hitch a ride on his back. The crowd was as graceful as the pothole-ridden concrete road was smooth and in a race of 11,000 anticipated participants, a 10,000-body pile up was all but inevitable.
Runners crowded all around, many moving from side to side in a vain attempt to get past the people directly in front of them. This only caused others to sidestep in half successful attempts to avoid a collision. The result was the same as every major highway in every major city; congestion and frequent slowdowns resulting from everyone in the left lane wanting to be in the right lane and everyone in the right lane was simultaneously determined to be in the left. Stephen constantly found himself apologizing for bumping or elbowing the person next to him. After the fifth episode of incidental impact he was completely out of amends and resolved to offer no further concessions. Upon the next side swipe with another random stranger he didn’t even bother to glance at the victim of his battery offense. Apparently, this was not rude as the runner said nothing to him either. After another half mile of feeling like a bumper car, he sensed he could have run completely over someone and would not have felt any obligation to apologize. Stephen was well beyond the starting line and while the density of the course had thinned a tad, the zigzag of the crowd was now stifling. Though they were moving faster, he was still perturbed by the feeling of being boxed in among the other sardines in shorts.
Mile 3
Stephen tried to distract his mind from the disorganized hoard by taking note of the personalities among the crowds they passed. There seemed to a complete disregard for any rules of engagement between the crowd and the runners. Sometimes an observer would play an odd game of chicken and dart across the road attempting to cross through a gap of runners without being leveled by oncoming foot traffic. Some of the observers would get most of the way across only to see the approaching crowd, give a bright eyed look of pure shock and then, like a squirrel caught in the headlights, dart back to their original position. Stephen found this particular distraction to be quite humorous; as if the person was suddenly surprised to see hundreds of people bearing down on them. One lady with a camera froze in the middle of the path as if to accept her fate and allow the runners to wash over her. Runners apologetically bouncing off her while she attempted to become the thinnest version of herself.
Stephen considered that while was one thing to get up at a ridiculous hour before both sun and rooster, it was an entirely different level psychosis to forcefully will yourself to put on thin garments, line up in the cold weather, and proceed to run 26.2 miles for the sake of sport and the promise of clunky piece of metal to reward the finishers. Stephen could feel the sea of sardines beginning to further spread out. The sun slowly progressed above the horizon, bringing a sliver of warmth alongside the air despite temperatures procrastinating well below comfortable. The runners approached a bend in the road which, according to the race map Stephen had studied the day before, was the last turn before they exited the city streets. The bend was a gradual turn with buildings and restaurants whose owners had the good senses to stay rested. The steady scent of morning mist was abruptly interrupted by the welcome but harnessing grasp of freshly baked bread. Almost immediately, Stephen’s eyes locked onto the glowing neon sign indicating a bakery was open.
His mother’s favorite meal of the day had always been breakfast. Rebecca was an early riser who held a strict morning routine of coffee and a quiet reading time on her back porch. Stephen hadn’t always known this person of his mother. In his childhood, he recalled a much more distant woman, one obsessed with appearances and the latest neighborhood gossip. The mother he grew up with was caring but Stephen would have hesitated to call her loving. When the days didn’t revolve around her part-time work schedule, Rebecca’s social calendar often got in the way. As a child, it was not uncommon for Stephen to be late for school as she refused to leave the house without “having her face on.” In those days, he was nearly always the last to be picked up at the end of the day. When Stephen joined the ranks of middle school and walking to meet the bus became an option, Rebecca was rarely out of bed before he left.
Somewhere in the year or two after Stephen graduated high school and left the house, Rebecca changed. Stephen noticed it almost immediately when she started joining her husband on his frequent business trips. Before long, he realized there were subtle differences emerging; her makeup softened, her style of clothing changed and her friends were different. During infrequent visits home, Stephen was surprised and even a little alarmed to hear Rebecca stirring around the house before the sun rose. In a tender conversation between a mother and her only child one cool fall Saturday morning, Rebecca apologized for her prior habits and how it had hurt Stephen as a child. She shared with him her experiences attending a new church in the neighborhood and how her perspective had changed. Much of what she said that morning was lost on Stephen as he had heard of religious conversions before, which he knew typically got lost when old habits returned. But Stephen watched Rebecca’s new habits stick.
She was cheerfully energetic and before long she started taking up new hobbies that seemed quite random to Stephen. He watched over time as Rebecca began reading more non-fiction books and enjoying photography. She visited people from her church with whom she had no history. The strangest of all was when she began making bread; lot of bread. Akin to a sweet old lady welcoming the new neighbors with cookies, Rebecca took a loaf of freshly made bread as a gift to someone nearly every time she left the house. Becoming a routine benefactor of her newfound baking, he cheekily told her the increased frequency in his visits had everything to do with the relationship between his single man’s diet and her baking skills. In truth, he knew it was because he now enjoyed her company. She was genuinely different, and while Stephen was growing in his own ways, he saw his mother as someone to respect and appreciate. Stephen felt the new woman Rebecca had come to be was compassionate, relatable and above all things, loving.