by Peter Sagal
I ran as a guide in 2015 at Boston for Erich Manser again, this time along with another guide, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make it the whole distance. I was (kind of) right: I had to stop for an egress at about mile 24, and didn’t quite catch up with the two of them before they crossed the line a minute ahead of me. That was my last marathon for a while, as I found myself slipping a bit, both in terms of fitness and dedication to the sport. But with the help of Mara and the dogs, I remain on the road, and here I intend to stay, no matter how slowly I might travel down it.
The problem with being a midlife crisis runner is you start your transformation just as everything else in your body is going to hell. Inside this fifty-three-year-old body is a thirteen-year-old runner, and as much as he would like to, he can’t get out. That poor kid is like the John Cusack character at the end of Being John Malkovich, peering out of eyes he can’t control. It seems unfair, actually. That ambitious youngster looking out through my tired eyes deserves better than me. I feel kind of bad for him.
The man who trained for and ran a 3:09 marathon in 2011 is gone; there are some days when I glance at a shop window as I run by and see someone who looks like that guy, but if I stop to make sure, he vanishes, because I am standing still, and he never was. The loss has not been so much ability but focus and desire; now, far more than otherwise, when the urge to stop comes upon me, I give in.
So I am a middle-aged man, born in 1965, and I am a runner, born (after some false starts) in 2005, and that is what I shall be until both pass on, some indeterminate time from now, at the same moment. I’ve come too far to retrace my steps now. The kind of runner I will be, in the next decade, and the one after that, will be different: less competitive with himself or others, less eager to find new worlds to conquer, but also less obsessed and less narrowly focused on the next square of pavement ahead. Runners slow, and runners fail. Some are grinded away by the friction on knees or feet, or a chronic lung or heart problem; some unlucky bastards are knocked down on the road. But the mark of a runner is to always get up.
My relationship with my own three daughters was profoundly changed through the trauma of the divorce, and remains so. But like Erich Manser, I have a kind of tunnel vision, looking forward to the day when we can all look at one another with new eyes. It’s not a sprint, but a marathon, and I’m good at those.
People ask me about the benefits of running, and there are many, even more than the ones discussed in this book, and I have realized many of them—better health, increased energy, the deep-seated thrill of setting a goal and, through difficult work, surpassing it. I have run many miles in many different places with many different people, and each one was worth the effort. But if there’s one thing that I have gained from my running career, it’s not the strength or cardiovascular fitness to run ten or twenty-six miles at a time, but the patience and focus to stay in the mile I’m in. Run long enough, and everything comes into view, be it a finish line or a home, a new one or one remade. What running has given me, most of all, is the practice of persistence.
And maybe, too, a habit of hope. Running sometimes sucks, but every run ends, and tomorrow is a new opportunity to take a first step. The differences between running as a lifestyle and “jogging” as exercise are many and much debated, but the key one is this: You “jog” as necessary exercise, something to endure. You run with the expectation that this outing, today, will be the day when it all comes together, when instead of your feet propelling you along the ground you’re actually flying, and your feet only serve to keep you anchored to the ground. Joggers wait to finish; we runners expect to get somewhere.
Which might be why, after some hesitation, I recently put aside the traumas of the past and the fear that I might repeat them in the future, and asked Mara to marry me. She said yes, and in that moment I once again experienced the same joy I did on the occasion of the birth of each of my three daughters. It felt as if a new life was beginning, and all kinds of wonderful things might happen. There is a celebration in committing yourself to a particular future.
The old joke is that a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. I disagree (of course I do): a second marriage is, or should be, like good luck, the residue of preparation. I had twenty years of training in how not to engage in human relationships. Like my first marathon, I did everything wrong. But now, with better training, with practice, with a learned realism about the road ahead of me, I’m confident about achieving a good time. I will be reckless and say I expect to medal.
Relationships may have something in common with running, in that you can practice and study and think and train and suffer and regroup, and learn from your mistakes and improve, and learn to avoid what pains you can and live with the ones you can’t, but in the end, all of that doesn’t matter. The only thing that really matters is whom you choose to do it with, and whom you do it for. As I said, we are cruelest to ourselves. When somebody else is counting on us, somebody we don’t want to disappoint, well then we get up early. We show up. We put our own struggle out of our mind and focus on the other person, and all of a sudden our feet no longer touch the ground.
There is sadness, and there is hate, and bitterness. There is regret and fear and doubt and there are the injuries done to us and there are the injuries we do to others. But the lesson and practice of running is, again, a faith in the possibility of positive change. That, if you run enough miles, with enough dedication and the right kind of mind-set, if you accept the limitations of what’s possible but refuse to accept the rutted path of what’s painless, if you keep at it, if you keep going, you can become what it was you were meant to be.
I’ve run around the earth, maybe more than once, and I’m still right where I started. But everything else has changed, and so much doubt and pain and struggle has fallen away, so that the only thing left to me, of all the things that weighed me down when I began that circumnavigation, is love. Love isn’t fast, and it isn’t strong. It’s stubborn, though, and it has muscles you can see. It can’t overwhelm doubt and it can’t banish bitterness and it can’t prevent anger and it can’t hold back despair, which have so many times risen up to overwhelm me, my life, and my family.
But love can outlast them all.
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without:
At Runner’s World: David Willey, who invited me to write for the magazine, as well as my editors, John Atwood, Charlie Butler, and Sean Downey, as well as Lindsay Bender, Mark Remy, Jennifer Van Allen, Amby Burfoot, and Pam Nisevich.
At the Boston Marathon: Josh Warren and his colleagues at Team With A Vision and the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and fellow marathoners William Greer, Erich Manser, Joe DeGutis, Ron Abramson, Dan Streetman, Aaron Scheidies, Corvin Bazgan, and Monte Harvill. Thanks also to Ellen Greer.
My running group, who saw me through many miles and much else: Chris Sheean, Chris Weber, Chris Courtois, Arden Swanson, Paul Olszowka, Paula O’Connor, Perry Vietti, Doug Schenkelberg, Doug Schaller, Martin Nieman, John Friesen, Candelario Celio, Ken Kansa, Alona Banai, and Ron Burke. My thanks as well to the Oak Park Running Club.
At NPR: Doug Berman, Michael Danforth, Eric Nuzum, Ian Chillag, Miles Doornboss, Emily Ecton, Jennifer Mills, Bill Kurtis and Donna LaPietra, Adam Felber, Paula Poundstone, P. J. O’Rourke, Alonzo Bodden, Peter Grosz, Faith Salie, Roxanne Roberts, Tom Bodett, Mo Rocca, Luke Burbank, Brian Babylon, and all our other panelists and staff members.
My editor, Jofie Ferrari-Adler, who showed extraordinary kindness and patience long after I should have exhausted it. My gratitude to him and the team at Simon & Schuster, including Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Stephen Bedford, Julia Prosser, Julianna Haubner, Kristen Lemire, Jonathan Evans, Carla Benton, Sara Kitchen, Kayley Hoffman, Beth Maglione, Ruth Lee-Mui, Alison Forner, and David Litman.
My literary agent, Luke Janklow, and his executive officer, Claire Dippel.
The remarkable Misty DeMars an
d her family.
My early readers: Paul Schellinger, Amy Dickinson, Roy Blount Jr., Alex Kotlowitz, and Erin Hogan.
Randy Wayne White and his friend Doc Ford, who generously lent me their home as a writer’s retreat.
Michael Hawley of the EG Conference and Jenifer Hixson of the Moth, who helped me present spoken-word versions of chapter one.
I would not have survived from one bombing to the next without very many friends who provided kindnesses large and small, including Ellen and Paul Coffey, Bob Haft and Deb Fausti, Deann and Rick Bayless, Paul Schellinger and Mindy Thomas, Tim Bent, Pete and Amanda Docter, Stephen and Denise Weeks, Lisa Mount, Michael Johnson and Max Temkin. There were many others and to list all of them would double the length of this book. Suffice to say: if you shared a kind word with me, I remember it and I am grateful to you all.
Kyle Cassidy, my padawan, for many different author photos, including the one on the cover.
Cris Hammond, Dave Pettus, Kenneth Goldman, and all the gentlemen of the forest.
My closest friends for more than thirty years: Jess Bravin and Nicole Galland.
My family, who I hope will not mind their appearances here, most especially my father, whose story I presume to tell.
My daughters, Rose, Grace, and Willa: there was a time I ran with all of you, pushing you or running alongside your bikes. I keep running so I may find you on the road again.
And finally: Mara, my wife, my happy ending, my destination, my home. Turns out I was running toward you the whole time.
About the Author
PETER SAGAL is the host of the Peabody Award–winning NPR news quiz Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!, the most popular show on public radio, heard by more than five million listeners each week. He is also a playwright, a screenwriter, the host of Constitution USA with Peter Sagal on PBS, a onetime extra in a Michael Jackson music video, a contributor to publications from Opera News to AARP The Magazine, and he has spent ten years as a featured columnist in Runner’s World. He’s run fourteen marathons across the United States. Sagal lives near Chicago with his wife, Mara.
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Also by Peter Sagal
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Copyright © 2018 by Peter Sagal
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Some of the material in this book appeared in different form in Runner’s World and AARP The Magazine.
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition October 2018
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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui
Jacket design by David Litman
Jacket photograph by Kyle Cassidy
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-4516-9624-0
ISBN 978-1-4516-9626-4 (ebook)
