Jeff Johnson

Ron Hill of Great Britain, the 1970 Boston Marathon winner, has a streak that dates more than three decades.

mileage, training pace, and/or general level of effort, their risk of injury increases. Admittedly, some daily runs are counterproductive. Even most die-hard streakers would confess that it is probably not a good decision to run if they are spewing blood or limping like an awakened mummy. And it is best to forgo the streak if a pregnant wife should insist on the presence of her husband during 24 hours of continuous labor.

In this yin and yang world of ours, there is probably a happy medium between running every day of our adult life and not running at all. Realistically, an attainable goal over a decade-long period might be to run daily at least 90 percent of the time, or about 27 days a month and 325 days a year. But what the heck: If one is not spitting up blood, suffering from the flu, or otherwise feeling pain, why not run all 3,652 days of a decade? Steve Lerner plans on maintaining his habit of running for the next 30 years (and beyond) as he enters his 80s. His advice to new runners: “Wear good shoes.” These are words of wisdom, especially to a new runner who plans on running every day for the next 18-plus years as Steve has. Well, hello—are you still there? Have your eyes been opened? Have you been intrigued by this streaking revelation? Hey, loosen up. Don’t be shy. Discard those work clothes, bare your soul, disrobe your inhibitions, and expose yourself to the wonders of it all. What do you say we put on our shoes; we don’t really need much else—and let’s go streaking.

Ain’t |a Runner?

One Marathon Does Not a Runner Make. Or Does It?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t | a woman? Look at me! —Sojourner Truth

n the predawn of an unusually cool July Saturday, my alarm sounds at 5:15

A.M. as it has for many weeks. Barely conscious, I hustle into the bathroom for some rote tooth and hair brushing and change into my running gear. I kiss my still-sleeping husband and drive in darkness to join a few hundred others for a training run marking the halfway point in my 2004 Marine Corps Marathon training with disorganized and questionably staffed DCFit—aka DCUnFit.

It was Sunday, October 26, 2003, shortly after 11:00 a.m. when the marathon bug bit me. In fits and starts for 10 years, I had tried running. But I didn’t run regularly until fall 2002, mostly in vigorous protest against middle-age weight gain but partly to take my place in my husband’s highly competitive and athletic family. Tran a few miles a few times each week. My first race, Habitat for Humanity’s 2002 Frostbite 5K, was postponed in poor December weather and rescheduled for

the 3.1 miles through unexpectedly hilly Silver Spring, Maryland. I overdressed, knowing little about how my body would react to running nonstop for nearly 45 minutes. My athlete-friend Stephanie and my athlete-cousin Stephanie ran with me; experienced runners both, they were cheerleaders and coaches as I struggled to finish my first race. But I proudly collected the customary participant’s T-shirt and finisher’s medal and marveled at my accomplishment.

Around that time, I lay on a massage table in front of my fireplace while my athlete-friend and massage therapist, Stephanie, worked on my not-very-sore muscles. Steph announced she was beginning training for the 2003 Marine Corps Marathon, her second marathon. Easily and quickly, I replied, “I’ll cheer you on,” envisioning standing at the finish line, applauding madly. “No,” said Steph. “I want you to run the final six miles with me.”

Not long after Steph’s command, I registered for an all-women’s 5K in June. By that cool morning, I had learned how to dress properly and what it means to be in the zone. I began the race slowly—jogging, really—conscious of other runners and the route; as I ran, my feet and legs overwhelmed my consciousness. My feet and legs were my consciousness; I stopped thinking and allowed my body to lead me to an under-28-minute finish. Again, I collected my participant’s T-shirt and finisher’s medal. Two months later, on a wickedly hot and humid August morning near Cape May, not far from where I was born and reared, I ran my first five-miler. At times, I staggered and even walked. When I finished, I was sure I had been running for well over an hour, but to my surprise and delight I finished in well under an hour. I added another T-shirt and medal to my growing collection.

BALANCING THE DEVIL ON THE OTHER SHOULDER

Still, on Stephanie’s marathon day, I had not run more than five miles; running 6.2 was inconceivable, but Steph had asked me to join her at the point at which experienced marathoners say the race begins: mile 20. By mile 20, legs are rubbery and weak, stamina is low, and worst of all, minds begin to betray runners. By mile 20, the devil on the shoulder is whispering, “You’re tired. Come on, just quit. It’ll feel soooo good.” I was to be Stephanie’s angel off the shoulder.

On her marathon day—Sunday, October 26, 2003—I took the D.C. Metro to the Smithsonian stop and jogged the half mile to the Jefferson Memorial. As I waited for Stephanie, I cheered the runners. As one of my heroes, I. King Jordan, Gallaudet University’s first deaf president, ran by, I flashed him his name sign and slapped him a high-five. Soon Stephanie appeared, an American flag stuck in her ponytail; she hardly needed my encouragement as she implored fans to cheer more and louder. We ran leisurely, chatting with 74-year-old veteran marathoner Ed (who passed us) and stopping for a water/toilet/cookie break.

As we ran, I noticed a runner wearing a Team Lombardi singlet. As a participant in a study at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, I wondered whether Team Lombardi was affiliated with the Center. The runner heaved out her “Yes”: she was in no shape to chat. But I heard the marathon bug’s relentless buzz as it circled and dove for me. I was bitten, and I was glad. At once, I knew I would run the 2004 Marine Corps Marathon as a member of Team Lombardi . . . and for my mom.

My mother developed breast cancer when I was 6. She survived two mastectomies, crude chemotherapy, and ravaging radiation. She wore a wig for years. Eventually debilitated, she walked with a cane. In her final hours, I sat by her bed and grasped at ways to restore her to the health she lost before I had memories. As the midsummer morning broke following an ominous, dark night, the home nurse and I bathed her, and my heart caved when my comatose mother’s face cringed

in pain, her eyes rolled back, and her hollow chest heaved as we ever-so-gently moved her arms to reach here and there with a sponge. I imagined scenes from movies and soap operas in which the dying heroine opens her eyes after the loved ones at her side have spent days willing her to wake up, to return to them, to live. My mother died a month before her 60th birthday.

In fall 2003, 25 years after my mother’s death and just short of turning 45, I contacted the Team Lombardi race director and became team member number one for the 2004 Marine Corps Marathon group. I committed to raise $2,000 for the Center and, beginning the following May, to six months of marathon training with DCUnFit.

At the Pentagon parking lot on that May morning in 2004, hundreds of runners and would-be runners gathered for time trials. We were to run two miles at a comfortable pace to place us with a running group. I studied others who chose to be, literally, up and running at a much-too-early weekend hour. Some were so fat that they had trouble walking from their cars to the meeting place. Others had bulging leg muscles and attitudes oozing experience. Still others (myself among them) were timid, insecure, and self-conscious. Knowing no one, I consoled myself: I wasn’t as fat as some; I had run a couple of races; I was older than a lot of runners, and that had to count for something.

DOWN WITH THE YELLOW GANG

In the excitement of beginning marathon training, I ran the two miles faster than I was comfortable but made the yellow group, the pack’s middle, running a 10minute mile. As months passed, I reluctantly relinquished speed for endurance. Iembraced training and kept meticulous records of my weight, workout dates, duration, and type, and the calories burned; I devoured running magazines. Alone along the Pacific Ocean, I ran a five-miler. On a treadmill in a Las Vegas hotel gym, I ran my first seven-miler. Without a running partner on a miserably windy, rainy, chilly, and gray Saturday, I ran my first eight-miler, pulled my right groin muscle, and lost my way. With my athlete-friend Stephanie, who was also training for the 2004 Marine Corps Marathon, I ran a 10-miler in an oceanside gale in Cape May. Alone in a record-breaking Alaskan heat wave, I ran a 10-mile loop to and from the Mendenhall Glacier. I ran through wooded Sitka, clapping and singing Springsteen’s “Born to Run” to alert bears that I was in their territory (and marveled that the bears didn’t attack me for my warbling). Over the course of three hours on my gym’s treadmill, I ran a 16-miler, chugging 96 ounces of water and devouring three energy bars. When the devil on my shoulder began her familiar refrain and my weakened legs begged me to stop, I chanted my own exhortation, “I don’t have cancer, I don’t have cancer, I don’t have cancer.” And I continued to run. I continued to run when I couldn’t fathom another step. When