The announcer’s voice took over after that and he described everything that happened to us. We were bunched up around the first turn so I made a little move and went into second place, just trying to stay out of trouble. Even as it was happening, the voice said “There goes Michael Campbell, moving into second place, staying out of trouble.” It was like being inside and outside of yourself at the same time. I kept bumping back and forth with Marcotte and Bourque, trying to settle myself down and find a clear place on the outside of lane one. All the time the big voice kept going, describing how we looked and calling out the splits and telling the crowd what kind of pace we were on and our projected finishing times. I couldn’t see Burner, but I knew he was close by because I heard the voice say something like “Jamie Burns is safely tucked in at fifth or sixth place.” I remember this only because the announcer used Burner’s real name and it sounded so strange to me.
The pace was fine, not really too slow or too fast, and after a lap and a half there were still lots of people close enough to the lead and feeling good. The problem with feeling good in a 1,500 is that you know it can’t last and that eventually, sometime in the next ninety seconds, everything you have left has got to come draining out of you, either in a great explosive rush at the end or some painful slow trickle. The kickers would’ve been happy to let it go slow and leave it all to some blazing last one-fifty, but the rest of us didn’t want that to happen. As we went through 800, most of the serious guys were looking around, waiting and watching to see who would make the first move. After about thirty seconds, Dawson decided it would have to be him. He threw in this big surge coming off the turn and broke the whole thing open, dividing the race up between those who could go with him and those who could not.
The voice said, “Eric Dawson is heading for home early.”
Graham and Bourque and I hooked up a couple steps back and it felt like we were breaking free of the others. I never turn around when I race and everybody knows it’s not a good idea to look back, but I was sure Burner must have been close by. Even then it was clear that Dawson didn’t have a chance. He’d given it a pretty fierce try and the rest of us probably owed him something for being brave enough to go, but he didn’t have enough left and I could see he was starting to break down.
People in the crowd always wonder why the guy with the lead heading into the last lap almost never wins. They wonder why he can’t hold on and why he can’t look as good as he did just a minute earlier when he came flying by. Some people believe that myth about Roger Bannister and John Landy back when they ran the Miracle Mile in Vancouver in 1954. That was probably the only time in history when the whole world actually cared about two guys who could run a mile in under four minutes. Bannister was the first to do it, everybody knows that, but by the time they met in Vancouver, Landy had gone even faster. He was the new world record holder and most people were betting on him to win. You can look it up if you want. The Miracle Mile was pure craziness, the Tyson/Holyfield of its time. Every country sent their reporters to cover the story and more than a hundred million people listened to the call on the radio. It was the first time CBC Television ever broadcasted live from the west coast. If you go to Vancouver today, the famous statue is still there, the one where Landy is looking over his left shoulder as Bannister comes by him on the right. The press and people who don’t know anything always say that if Landy had looked the other way — if only he’d looked to the right — he would have seen Bannister coming and he never would have let him go by. They call it the phantom pass, as if Landy was just a victim of bad luck and bad timing. As if Bannister was like some ghost, slipping past unseen.
That’s the story they tell, but it’s not true. If you ever watch a tape of that race you’ll see that poor Landy is dead before he even starts the last lap. It’s one of those things you recognize if you’ve been through it yourself. When a guy is done, he’s just done and no amount of fighting can save him. The exercise physiology people will explain that it’s all about lactic acid fermentation and how when you push beyond your limit your legs run out of oxygen and the tissue starts to fill up with this burning liquid waste. We called it “rigging,” short for rigor mortis. When your body started to constrict, to tighten up involuntarily, first in your arms and your calves and then your quads and your hamstrings and your brain — when parts of you gave out like that, dying right underneath you at exactly the moment you needed something more — we called that rigging. Dawson was dying in front of us that day and we could see it in every broken down step he took. Look back at the grainy black and white video of the Miracle Mile. You’ll see it. Landy wasn’t taken by surprise. He knew exactly where Bannister was coming from — he just couldn’t do anything to stop it. For that whole last lap Bannister is right behind, tall and gangly and awkward and just waiting, deciding when to go. When Landy looked to his left — in that moment they made into a statue — he wasn’t trying to hold on for the win. That possibility was gone and he knew it. People forget that Richard Ferguson, a Canadian, finished third in the Miracle Mile. He’s the important missing character, the one who didn’t make it into the statue. Ferguson was the threat coming up from behind; he was the guy Landy feared. It’s always like that. The most interesting stories in most races don’t have anything to do with winning.
DAWSON WAS ALMOST SHAKING when we came by him. The last lap was going to be a death march for him. Graham and Bourque and I went past in a single step and there was nothing left in Dawson to go with us.
The voice said, “Graham, Bourque, Campbell. It will be decided by these three.”
I couldn’t believe I was still in it and feeling okay. Graham looked like he was getting ready to drop the hammer and put an end to this, but as we headed down the final back stretch Bourque seemed a little wobbly and for about five seconds, I thought I had a real shot at bringing him down and getting myself in there for second and a spot on the team. I was just about to release my own kick, trying to gauge how much I had left and deciding how I could fit it into that last 250 metres. I got up on my toes and was getting ready to charge when I felt this hand reach out and touch the middle of my back, kind of gently, just a tap so I’d know he was there. I looked to my right and Burner came roaring by with his tongue hanging out and that enraged look in his eyes.
The voice said “Look at that. Burns is making a very strong move.”
I UNDERSTAND THAT sometimes people get their priorities mixed-up. And I know that when you give yourself over completely to just one thing, you can lose perspective on the rest of the world. That’s a feeling I know. I think it’s what happens to those old ladies who donate their life savings to corrupt televangelists or to those pilgrims in the Philippines who compete for the honour of being nailed, actually hammered, to a cross for their Easter celebrations. We have to scrounge for meaning wherever we can find it and there’s no way to separate our faith from our desperation. You see it everywhere. Football hooligans, scholars of Renaissance poetry, fans of heavy metal music, car buffs, sexual perverts, collectors of all kinds, extreme bungee jumpers, lonely physicists, long distance runners and tightly wound suburban housewives who want to make sure they entertain in just the right way. All of us. We can only value what we yearn for and it really does not matter what others think.
This is why I cannot expect you to understand that when Jamie Burns came past me and started up that now infamous kick which won him the national title in the 1,500 metres — his wild, chased-by-the-train-sprint that carried him around me, past Bourque and all the way up to Graham — I cannot expect you to understand that when this happened, I was caught up, caught up for the first and only time in my life, in one of those pure ecstatic surges that I believed only religious people ever experienced. Even as it unfolded in front of me and I watched Graham hopelessly trying to hold him off, I knew I had never wanted anything more than this, just to see Burner come up even and then edge his way forward in those last few steps and come sailing across the line with both his hands in the air. I did not care that this was such a small thing or that it could be shared with so few. I knew only that this event, this little victory mattered to me in some serious way that was probably impossible to communicate. I didn’t pray for it to happen because there would be nobody to receive a prayer like that. But I did wish for it and even the wish told me something I had never known about myself before. We are what we want most and there are no miracles without desire. That’s why a mom can lift a car off her child after the accident and a guy can survive a plane crash and live in the woods for a week drinking only the sweat wrung from his socks. That’s how Burner won that race, by miraculous desperation.