Marathoning New York City fireman and police officers join forces before the start of the race.

Recently, George Cain and his girlfriend bought a house in Colorado, and they were going to move out there soon. But on September 11, when Cain finished working the night before, his boss asked if he wanted some overtime. George Cain responded: “Sure. Where the heck do I have to go?”

The last they heard from him, Gia says, Cain and his team were on the 26th floor of the World Trade Center.

Gia explains that George had run this marathon for the first time two years ago, then ran it again last year, and he was going to run it again this year. He had already registered.

We run together in silence, then I thank Gia, and finally I move on.

At mile eight, all runners merge for the first time since the cannon went off at the start. We create another still larger sea of bobbing heads.

At an intersection, to my right in the cross street, firefighters stand and sit on a fire truck. They have erected a tie-dyed bedsheet bearing these words:

We will never forget our brothers.

Somewhere after mile eight or nine, a high school band plays what might have been “Rocky’s Theme” but also might not have been. The crowd noise is so loud everything is distorted.

My starting line friend, Josh, comes up and runs beside me. I ask if his girlfriend and her twin sister were ahead or behind us. He laughs that they had better be behind us or else their father would give him a real hard time.

In front of some brownstones, an African American woman is making a huge noise by flailing a spoon against a pot lid.

Shortly past her, another guy with a whistle is blowing it nonstop.

The crowd is unbelievable. I had been told how huge the crowds are, but I am still surprised.

At the water stops, the kids handing us cups have on bright yellow plastic “Asics New York Marathon” raincoats.

RUNNING FOR CAUSES

Icome upon a fellow in a purple singlet with “Fred’s Team USA” on the back. At the bottom are the words “Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.” A piece of paper pinned to the singlet reads, “I am running for Mark Rosen. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.” That cancer center is where my late uncle practiced medicine.

As Irun, I think about following my uncle to New York from the same house where he and I both grew up and from the same university where he went to medical school and I went to law and divinity schools. He has been gone a long time, an oncologist killed by cancer. But I keep remembering him, keep finding traces.

Sitting on apartment steps are three small children. They are black, but I realize I do not know whether they are African Americans. Each of the three has a single drumstick, but they share their drums: two five-gallon plastic containers.

After a water stop, some guy drinking water decides to walk, and I almost run up his back.

“United We Run” is on shirt after shirt. Sometimes it’s “United We Stand.” More often on the runners, however, it is the race theme, “United We Run.”

An African American gentleman passes me. He has a big “4” on the left of his jersey and then on the right are these words, “Mom, Life, USA.” As in “For Mom, For Life, For USA.” At the bottom of his shirt, again I read, “United We Run.”

Around Pennsylvania and Bedford we pass through a Hassidic community. Now I am behind a woman in white tights with a pink top, pink ballerina skirt, pink wings, pink bug ears, and something pink holding her hair in a ponytail. She gets a lot of stares from the children. The woman in pink has “Lucy” on the front of her outfit. I know because she draws a lot of comments, even, and especially, from a group of guys with black hats and black overcoats and white

shirts and braids hanging out on both sides of their cheeks. If they weren’t dressed that way, you would say that their comments were provocative and her name was called almost as a catcall.

People are shouting at us, depending on what they see on our shirts:

“Go USA!”

“Vive La France!”

Near Fourth Street and Bedford, an Italian flag, a Mexican flag, and a bagpiper are all together on a corner.

Asign over the front of a law office reads something like, “Maluski, Maluski & Boccio.” Not a typical law firm name in my hometown.

Around mile 13 we start up Pulaski Bridge to cross to Manhattan. Good crowd. Itis quite something to see a bridge on one side totally filled with people.

ELVIS HAS ENTERED THE RACE

I keep hearing people yell for Elvis. Finally I spot him as he has moved slightly ahead of me. He is wearing a white stole and white pants with flared legs, and he is looking good. I laugh out loud as I recall running the Memphis Marathon and thanking cheering spectators in my deepest voice, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” The Memphians all knew whom I was trying to sound like and invariably they would laugh. Apparently many New Yorkers also know the King.

On the far side of the bridge but still on it, I come up behind a young woman in a white shirt with these words in black on the back: “More than a conqueror through Christ.” As I come beside her, I say, “More than a conqueror…” She responds, “. . . through Christ.” I ask and she says she’s from New Jersey. I say I’m from Tennessee. Before I move on, I say to her, “Blessings.”

“God bless you, too,” she says.

Between 4th Avenue and 21st Street, a little boy of about two sits on his father’s shoulders. Each hand grasps an American flag. The red, white, and blue flies just above his dad’s ears.

Icome upon a woman from a French jogging school or tour group. None of her teammates or classmates are near her. At my request, she tells me where she is from and I tell her I’m from Tennessee. She seems to recognize the state’s name but little more.

We pass a hard rock band, then taped music of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” with its “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!” That’s followed by a band playing marimbas and various other Latin beats.

About mile 14 or a little past, someone who has run up beside me calls my name. It’s my friend Joe Kennedy from Franklin, Tennessee. I haven’t seen him in months since we ran long together in his home county. What a pleasant surprise. We talk nonstop, catching up with each other.

We cross the bridge and have an incredible view from underneath. Once we are over the bridge, the crowd in Manhattan is phenomenal.

As we move up First Avenue, the crowd becomes simply amazing.

Joe hears someone yelling, “Roy!” I turn to the left and look all the way across First Avenue. My son Rick sits on Matt Wiltshire’s shoulders holding a patriotically painted sign that says simply, “Roy.” I wave and wave. As Irunon, Iremember Fourth of July celebrations at Matt’s family’s farm when I carried Matt and his sister, Carrie, on my shoulders. Now he’s an Ivy League grad doing investment banking and things financial well beyond my reckoning.

At about 118th and 1st Avenue at Oliver’s Dog and Cat Clinic is another Latin-sounding band.

Joe asks whether I knew a fellow who ran in Nashville who recently collapsed and died. I did not know the gentleman. Even so, I question Joe’s timing of bringing that to my attention. Is he warning me based on what I look like after 17 or 18 miles?

THE FINISH

Over a bridge and into the Bronx. I think. Joe is opening a bit of a lead on the hill. On the flat at the top of the hill, I decide to try to catch him. Somewhere around mile 20 or 21, Joe and I hear through a loudspeaker that there is anew New York City Marathon course record. Neither of us gets the name or nationality of the new record holder. (Actually, by this time there are new records for both men and women.) On a downhill I catch Joe. He is nice enough to let me pull on his coattails. Thear the old song “Wooly Bully.”

In Harlem I hear what I call blues and Motown sounds. One song is “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now!” I hope that is right. And I know it is, though I have slowed and Joe has gone ahead.

Meagen from New Zealand and I pass and re-pass each other.

We run down beside Central Park. The sun breaks through the trees in spots, yet much of the time we enjoy shade. I wonder why I am slowing so, particularly since [have taken it pretty easy along the way. “Maybe,” I wonder, “maybe running 26.2 miles is just hard on you, even when you are not racing it.”

We turn into Central Park and I know the end is near. The crowds in the park are awesome and right on top of us. About mile 24 or 25 I hear Matthew and his wife, Lisa, and sister Carrie and my son Rick calling my name again. I look back to my left, and there is Rick in his orange University of Tennessee jacket once again on top of Matthew’s shoulders. I give them a big wave and smile while trying to avoid tripping over anyone.

In the last mile or so I spot a racewalker. I do not know if he has done the flying shuffle the whole way, but if so then he is one fast race-walker. In any event, I use him for motivation. I simply do not want to let some guy walking beat me.

I pick it up and pass him. Then I kick a bit the last half mile, trying to pass some of the hundreds around us, and finish in no more than 3:45, my slowest

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No explosions. No one harmed, so far as I know. People are not acting like anything bad has happened. Still, it is not over yet, I think. But I do not think the terrorists have chosen to take us on this day.

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Running in Literature

When Running Literature Goes Long in the Novel, the Competition Really Heats Up. Part 5 of 5

Parts 1 through 4 of Roger’s series appeared in our last four issues.

So far, with a little help from my friends”, I have tracked down and read 24 running novels. That is more than I suspected, though still fewer than a great sport like ours deserves. (I will be happy to hear of more: mail to rogerrobinson61 @ hotmail.com.)

Ihave covered mainly America, Great Britain, and New Zealand but not yet Africa, Australia, or Canada (other than through libraries where I regularly work). Titles from these countries would be especially appreciated. This survey is limited to works of fiction above short-story length, for adults, and in English. Nonfiction is not included. There are several running biographies, histories, and books of essays of high literary merit, some with the narrative interest of a good novel, but they are quite often discussed elsewhere. To have included them here would have become unmanageable. Stories for children were also excluded, as that is a vast and specialist literary field.

The only other rule is that for this survey the novel or novella must be significantly about running as a central subject, not a passing episode or reference, as in most of the texts I have considered in installments 1 through 4. The Iliad and Tom Brown’s Schooldays are not eligible here (though I wavered over Wilkie Collins’s Man and Wife, see installment 3). Hence, no books earlier than 1930 have been found. Sport simply was not important enough to be the subject of a novel.

The kind of running is not limited. These novels cover sprinters and ultrarunners, sporting amateurs and hired domestic couriers, and everything in between. If your tastes are entirely specialized, choose from the short descriptions provided, but you will miss some pleasures since all runners have much to share. Two or three of the books are available only in research libraries, but most are accessible with a little interloan or Internet effort.

As for how to judge a contest among novels, go for a road run in a pair of plastic sandals. You will cover the ground, but every step is a dull, jarring thunk. Now do the same course in your best racing flats. Spring and float and vary the pace with the finest control. Your running is alive. That’s what I looked for in novels about running. It’s not a matter only of story or accurate detail. The best novels give running and runners life in the imagination. Others may cover similar ground, but it all goes thunk-thunk.

Having often been a judge of literary awards and competitions, I know that the safe thing here would be to not rank the novels. That way I would escape charges of being subjective and keep more friends. But runners like a race, so T’ll risk it.

Ten books are eliminated in the semifinals, for the usual reason—lack of space in the final. Some are well worth a runner’s time, though limited in literary skills; some go mainly thunk-thunk; and some are merely commercial products. The last group includes the “sex, spies, and finishing-tape” blockbusters; ersatz Olympic epics; and beat-up revelations about drugs, IOC corruption, nasty coaches (always German or eastern European), money, and masochism. They may give the usual quick-fix pleasure if you enjoy thrillers. Personally I remain unthrilled by writing like, “He was running in a hot, white light of agony” (Hugh Atkinson). Serves him right.

Here are the semifinalists that didn’t make it through, alphabetically by author: Hugh Atkinson, The Games (1967), lurid exploitation; Linda Barnes, Dead Heat (1984), a Boston Marathon thriller; Brian G. Dyson, Pepper in the Blood (1995), pepper-blooded heroine overcomes manipulative Eastern European coach to win at Atlanta; James J. Fischer, Runners’ Blood, medically expert; David Grant, Moscow 5000 (1979), best of the “Olympic thrillers,” top nonqualifier; Tom Holt, Olympiad (2001), laborious tour through ancient Greece; Peter Lear, Goldengirl (1978), disappointingly formulaic, which is perhaps why a genuine track expert like Peter Lovesey wrote under a pen name; Cordner Nelson, The Miler (1969), though aimed at “young people,” is good enough on the track to list here and not bad on the training/relationships conflict; John Salisbury, Moscow Gold (1980): “Viren summoned from the depths of his being the supreme, lynching effort of mind and body to forge ahead of his rivals to the tape.” (Thunk.) And Steven A. Simon, On the Dead Run (2000), a well-informed cops-and-runners political thriller set in

Running Novels: The World Championship

Start list Hugh Atkinson (GBR), The Games (1967) Linda Barnes (USA), Dead Heat (1984) Pat Booth (NZL), Sprint from the Bell (1966) Paul Christman (USA), The Purple Runner (1983) Brian G. Dyson (USA), Pepper in the Blood (1995) James J. Fischer (USA), Runners’ Blood (2000) Brian Glanville (GBR), The Olympian (1969) David Grant (GBR), Moscow 5000 (1979) Tom Holt (GBR), Olympiad (2001) Peter Lear (GBR), Goldengirl (1978) Bill Loader (GBR), Staying the Distance (1958) Peter Lovesey (GBR), Wobble to Death (1970) Tom McNab (USA), The Fast Men (1986) Tom McNab (USA), Flanagan’s Run (1982) James McNeish (NZL), Lovelock (1986) Gladys Mitchell (GBR), The Longer Bodies (1930) Cordner Nelson (USA), The Miler (1969) John Owen (GBR), The Running Footman (1931) John L. Parker Jr. (USA), Once a Runner (1978) John Salisbury (GBR), Moscow Gold (1980) Alan Sillitoe (GBR), “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” (1959) Steven A. Simon (USA), On the Dead Run (2000) : Brooks Stannard (USA), The Glow (1979) Patricia Nell Warren (USA), The Front Runner (1974)

Recommended novels with significant running content (see installments 3 and 4, Marathon & Beyond May/June 2002 and July/Aug 2002):

Wilkie Collins (GBR), Man and Wife (1870)

Thomas Hughes (GBR), Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857)

Bernard Malamud (USA), Dubin’s Lives (1979)

Recommended novels for young adults with significant running content (see installment 4, Marathon & Beyond July/August 2002): R.R. Knudson (USA), Fox Running (1975) & Zan Hagen’s Marathon (1984) D‘Arcy McNickle (USA), Runner in the Sun (1954) Donna Prebble (USA), Yamino-Kwiti: Boy Runner of Siba (1940)

Late entries (that is, novels not yet obtained or read too late for consideration):

David Foster (AUS), “Eye of the Bull,” in Hitting the Wall. Two Novellas (1 989) Bruce Glikin (USA), Slinger Sanchez Running Gun (1998) Bruce Tuckman (USA), Long Road to Boston (1998)

Washington, D.C.’s trail-running community, often enjoyable, and unremittingly detailed in reproducing that scene.

Fourteen finalists follow, in reverse finishing order. All are rewarding books for a runner to read, and most have imaginative and literary qualities that should give enjoyment to any willing reader.

14. Gladys Mitchell’s The Longer Bodies (London, 1930) is an adroit country-house whodunit murder mystery. This particular country house has its own running track, used for training by an eccentric English cast of cousins whose aunt has bequeathed her fortune to “the first chosen to represent England.” The writing is sharp and concise (a relief after many of the semifinalists), and the only thing that goes thunk is the shot put dropped from the terrace onto the head of the first murder victim. The second dies impaled with a javelin while shot-putting. As these suggest, it’s more than slightly tongue in cheek, with some quirky comic scenes as the unathletic cousins try to get into shape on the track. An entertaining oddball, though long out of print.

13. Brooks Stannard’s The Glow (New York, 1979) is an even quirkier and darker thriller, professionally narrated and skillfully paced toward its horrific ending. From an innocuous opening as a warm and fuzzy about benevolent New York seniors exercising to stay youthful, it turns into a macabre vampire tale, in which their obsession becomes a metaphor for destructive selfishness. I would rank it higher if there were more running scenes and less chitchat about Manhattan shopping. One or two passages nicely evoke Central Park, where “she liked the muted light that splattered through the canopy of leaves over the path.” The final sequence of terror-stricken delirious flight is the most nightmarish version of running since the reader fled from the murderous footfalls of H.G. Wells’s invisible man (in installment 3 of this series).

12. John Owen’s The Running Footman (London, 1931) is very different, asadly poignant story about one of the humble household couriers of 18thcentury England. Though overmannered in style, it is good on the running, especially on the extreme tiredness the worthy John endures as he carries messages or fetches flowers at the whim of his employers over huge distances between London and Suffolk. There is real pathos in the way his superiors, even the governess he secretly loves, take his efforts for granted. “The running footman ran on” becomes a refrain, in writing that at its best is sorrowfully poetic. A good story, too—he dies at the end. Long out of print but could make a tearful movie.

11. Peter Lovesey’s Wobble to Death (London, 1970) was serialized in

Lovesey was already an established track writer and historian, working on his classic Centennial History of the AAA, when he devised this original combination of early sports history, period atmosphere, and murder mystery. It is a

detective story set at a six-day race in 1879. The strange world of late-19th-century ultrarunning is brilliantly evoked, with its potent mix of courage, cruelty, commercialism, and colorful personalities. Equally good is the atmosphere of Victorian London, with its jostling foggy streets and dingy gaslit interiors, especially the vast grimy iron and glass Islington Agricultural Hall where the runners shuffle and limp their eight-lap miles among half-dried animal droppings. Their blisters and cramps, their primitive sleeping arrangements and strychnine-laced “bracers” are vividly detailed. The peds themselves are a credible and characterful bunch, and the tactical moves and verbal exchanges among the patrician Captain Chadwick, the fussy

diminutive Dr. Mostyn-Smith, and the Irish lout (but resolute competitor) Feargus O’ Flaherty ring true to anyone who knows and loves the oddly mixed world of distance runners. I find the detective story less interesting, possibly because in the end it’s not one of the runners who did it. But Sergeant Cribb and his large-booted assistant Constable Thackeray went on to win many fans in later Lovesey murder mysteries. Come to think, it’s a pity they don’t appear in the author’s Goldengirl (see semifinals) to bring a little common sense to that

fantasy.

Roger Robinson

10. John L. Parker Jr’s. Once a Runner (Cedar Mountain, N.C., 1978). “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/But to be young was very heaven!” wrote Wordsworth about living in revolutionary France, and John Parker conveys the same blissful feeling about being part of the epoch-making Florida running scene at the turn of the 1970s. The novel draws its considerable energy from the sense that he was ultimately only a minor part so that it reads as akind of fantasy of frustrated aspiration. With the attractiveness and the vanities of its youthfulness, it has (like early Wordsworth again) something of the “egotistical sublime.” It is powerful on the runner’s passionate, unapologetic hermitlike commitment, and, if that

makes the later action seem like wish fulfillment, that too is psychologically accurate to such single-minded self-preoccupation. There are excellent running sequences, including one of the classic passages of the genre, the 60 x 400 interval session that extends into moonlight and catches the runner’s stream of consciousness under such a self-imposed ordeal better than it has ever been done. Yet there are also tiresome self-congratulatory student prank scenes, facile caricatures of college officers, and snide swipes at other running novels. (And is it pedantic to think that an aspiring world-class miler should trouble to spell Herb Elliott’s name right?) The writing at its best has an energy that fuses with the running it describes: “Cassidy raced along to a night rhythm, pocketa pocketa, a steady tattoo of pleasant solo effort which starred him under many streetlights.” But then it can slide into freshman pomposity. “He was a shaded meteor plumbing a twinkling universe.” The story is slight (evil college officers exclude worthy runner who defies them disguised as a Finn to outkick world record holder to ecstatic applause), but the book’s commitment, its vitality, its self-belief are all in showing how it is to live as arunner —the labor, the loneliness, the agonies, and the bliss and very heaven of it.

9. Bill Loader’s Staying the Distance (London, 1958) tells with concise clarity how a working-class English runner overcomes self-doubt and a social inferiority complex to finally “‘stay the distance” and win an international 5,000 meters. It is especially good on the dingy track and field scene of industrial northern England of the 1950s and quite good (with limitations) on how the runner’s personal anxieties intersect with his running. An ordinary man in everything but his aspiration to be a great runner, Tigger Dobson gets screwed up by his sullen resentment against the Oxford-educated “Golden Boy” who beats him on the track and (it seems) steals his girl. His failure in a big trial race is convincing and painful to share. “Disappointment was a poison, corroding his body and mind. If he couldn’t be first, he didn’t care where else he came.” As things improve it gets less believable—Golden Boy turns into a jolly decent chap; the forgiving girl shows up before the big race to kiss him good luck; and the description of the climactic race is done entirely from the outside, movie style, through commentators, crowd, girl in admiring tears, mum hiding her face, and so on. It keeps a good, solid literary pace but lacks a top gear.

8. Paul Christman’s The Purple Runner (Boulder, Colo., 1983) makes a story of wonders and romance emerge from a credible setting, as good fantasy should. It has strengths unusual in this field. Better than any other novel here (except the special case of Flanagan’s Run), it brings to life a full running community, a varied cross section of interesting people behind the cast of five main characters, all training and seeing each other train and running together by arrangement or accident or romantic opportunism on London’s Hampstead Heath. That community sense is an important part of running experience in

many places, and Christman captures it affectionately. He also gets closer to the ordinary realities of running than most other novels, not just the extreme workouts or heroic finish line victories, but the routine and rewards of daily running, the feel of different surfaces and gradients under your feet, the rain in your face and the roots that catch your toes, the feel of dried clay on the back of your legs, the unconscious picking up of speed as you pass some friend by chance in training, the unspoken pressure when the friend joins you, and just how it feels to be ordinarily tired. Also unique to this novel, it affirms the value of running as enriching life for runners of any level of ability. Off the subject of running, especially in the early pages, the writing tries too hard to be literary and overreaches, like an anxious runner early in the race, and gets into polysyllabic-adjectival oxygen debt, also choking on several participles that go down the wrong way. But it settles down later into a more modest, effective stride. The five main characters represent distinct and credible attitudes to running— an American seeking to make the most of limited talent, another too insouciant to use the many talents he has, an unwashed but canny and resilient Scot still good for a 2:30 marathon at age 53, an attractive young New Zealand star seeking a relationship with the same purpose and success she finds in running, and the mystery “purple runner” usually glimpsed only at a distance running across the heath at amazing speeds. All point toward the London Marathon that provides an inspiring conclusion. For Christman takes the risk of stepping from realism into fantasy. His facially scarred recluse who emerges from his cavernous underground hideaway only to run prodigious interval sessions (10 X 1 mile in 4:15) or play masterly pub chess is a romantic running Phantom of the Heath, with echoes of the Lone Ranger and, for English readers, of the Famous Wilson from the 1940s boys’ magazine The Wizard, still cult reading in some English running circles. The possibility that he is Steve Prefontaine (like Wilson, a phoenix reborn) is teasingly sustained. And his climactic subtwo-hour marathon is pure Broadway in its energy and send ’°em home happy uplift. Why not? There is no rule against fantasy in fiction, and Christman handles it with boyish zest; and anyway, he is only being more open about it than the heroics of Parker, Loader, Warren, or McNab.

7. Pat Booth’s Sprint from the Bell (London & Auckland, 1966) gives another convincing picture of the preprofessional era, this time in New Zealand. The story is of Steve Barlow, an ex-seminarian whose fervor is transferred under an inspiring coach into a quest to be the first under 3:50 for the mile. It’s better than Loader or Parker on the personal stresses of such dedication, on his marriage in this case. It also deals well with the pressures of celebrity, an intense problem in a small society, as Steve is lured into ambiguous shamateur employment as a front man for a pharmaceuticals company. Booth is a vastly experienced writer, a top journalist and investigative reporter, who has also