The Thin Line - The Short Story Of A Runner

by E.A. Schmidt

  * * * *

  Stiff. That was how he felt every morning. Especially his legs and especially today. They felt like the ancient trunks of some gnarled oak trees. It was 7 am and he was already awake. He was desperately trying to finish the assignment that had been put off last night because of his dinner date. He managed to cram in 30 minutes of work before heading out the door for his daily run.

  Dan ran into him again after he was a mile into it. Dan looked like he had had 10 hours of sleep last night, which certainly contrasted with the heavy bags under his own weary eyes. Somehow Dan always acted and looked as if he was operating on 10 hours of sleep. Where did he find the time?

  “So, how was dinner with the lady friend?”

  “Good. Nice. Relaxing.”

  “Did you get a chance to finish up that lab report?”

  “Uh…no…still working on it. Almost done though.”

  “Oh, bummer, dude. I finished it last night. If you want, I was going to work on the homework for tonight in the library after we finish up our run. Wanna join me?”

  “Okay.”

  As they were running they passed a bevy of deer. The animals warily watched the athletes cruise by them from the side of the road. There was a young father with short antlers standing protectively astride his doe with their two little bambies.

  “They are pretty amazing creatures, aren’t they? Like, elegant when they run. And so fast too.”

  Dan replied, “Mmm, yep.”

  “I had a dream the other night about being a deer”, he said thoughtfully.

  “Oh yea?” replied a curious Dan.

  “Yea, it was amazing. I was in a race. It was the last lap of a mile race and suddenly I looked down and saw that I had sprung two more legs and that they were deer legs. I was transformed into a deer, like a mammalian version of Faust’s ‘Metamorphosis’.

  “That was Kafka”, Dan corrected him.

  “Oh, right, well whatever. Anyway, I turned into a deer and ran home like the wind…all the way to the line uncontested. I beat everyone by 100 meters. It was amazing. I felt like a natural born runner. It…I…felt perfect.”

  “Sound cool, man”, Dan replied. Then he accelerated. His companion struggled to match his stride.

  He and Dan went to the library after running just as they said they would to work on the homework for the following night. He would just have to work on the lab assignment afterwards, although he was rather worried. He desperately needed his sleep for Friday. That was the day of Conferences and he knew it would be tough to be properly rested because he was going to have to stay up late on Thursday night to finish the lab, which had to be emailed in on Friday morning at the latest. He was getting anxious. He felt like he was losing control of the house of cards that he saw as his life. The to-do list simply grew longer and time simply grew shorter and shorter.

  They worked in the library for 1 hour and 37 minutes. His watch never lied and he checked his watch very often. He also eyed Dan with envy during that time. How was it that Dan was so good at calculus? How was he so good at everything for that matter? His GPA was 3.97. Dan’s was a 4.0.

  While he was working through a rather difficult problem, which Dan had breezed through and was currently trying in vain to explain, his phone buzzed intermittently again. It was his girlfriend.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “How are you?”

  “Okay.”

  “Whatchu up to?”

  “I’m at the library.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bother you.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m here with Dan. We’re working on our homework.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  “Yea.”

  “I don’t think I’ve met Dan yet.”

  “Really? Oh, I should definitely introduce you guys. Dan runs too. He joined the team last semester when I was sick. We run together a lot. He is really talented.”

  “No, I know. You talk about him a lot.”

  “Oh”, he paused and looked at Dan who was still buried in his book.

  “Yea, sometime it’d be nice to meet him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, well I better let you go.”

  “Okay.”

  “Love you.”

  “Yea, love you too.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Dan looked up from his textbook. “You should introduce us, man. She seems like a really nice girl.”

  “Yea, I can’t believe you haven’t met. I mean you’re my best friend and it’s important for girlfriends and best friends to meet.”

  “Absolutely. Do you think she’ll like me?”

  “I hope so. I wouldn’t want something coming in between us. I value our friendship.”

  Dan smiled, “Thanks man. I appreciate it.”

  They went back to work.

  “Wait, Dan. Are you sure this number is right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  The next day was rough for him. The lab assignment that was hanging over him finally came to a head and he had to stay up quite late to finish it. Quite late for him was 1:00 am. Ideally his usual bedtime was 10 pm. Sleep was a precious commodity. Sleep was time and time was the most important commodity. Sleep cost a lot of time. The constant struggle of his life was balance. He needed his rest, mostly because of his running, and he tried to always get 9 hours. Nine hours is nine hours no matter how you cut it. That only leaves 15 hours for the rest of day. Some people work 15 hours a day. He thought of these people and then he thought about how small he felt compared to them.

  There was always work he was trying to finish. Sometimes he felt like he was hanging onto a cliff with his fingers gradually slipping out. The control of his life appeared absolute to everyone but himself. He was always tired and always had the feeling of sprinting just to keep up with the ground beneath him, like some nightmarish treadmill. He hated treadmills. They frustrated him. Not going anywhere when he ran made him feel like his run accomplished nothing. That made him anxious.

  At 1:00 am he hit ‘save’ on his computer and emailed the accursed lab to his professor. The late night came at the worst possible time for him. The Conference meet was tomorrow – technically later that day. This was a race that he had been preparing for over the last year. His coach knew he was in shape, his teammates knew he was in shape. Dan knew he was in shape, but he also knew that Dan was in better shape. This made him feel like he wasn’t as ready for tomorrow as he should be.

  After five hours of sleep he awoke on the day of the most important race of his college career so far feeling very tired. It was a rainy, miserable day. Cold, gray and windy. The course would be grassy and muddy. Traveling to the race, he sat in the back of the bus in the same seat he always sat in, away from his teammates. The stench of diesel pumping out of the idling engine made him nauseous. When it came time for his race he sat up, stretched, and pulled on his spikes and flats. His weapons.

  He toed the line and high-fived his teammates. His skin was covered with goose bumps and cold rain. The field was hushed. Looking down the line he saw 100 other tense bodies, eager to be set loose. His breathing grew shallow and intense. He gripped his hands into fists and looked at the dark sky above him.

  Finally, the starting gun snapped the athletes out of the pre-race tension like a broken guitar string. Hundreds of legs flashed up and down and rapidly churned the course into a muddy river. The flashy and brightly colored jerseys of the runners flew by and provided the only source of color that was not green, brown or grey.

  After fifteen minutes of racing he was in 5th place and quickly moving up. Suddenly, his fatigued gaze fell upon a spectator wearing jeans on the side of the course. The bystander was leaning against a tree with one leg bent at the knee and with his hands in his pockets. It was Dan. There was no cheer or loud encouragement c
oming from his mouth. Rather, he merely glared at him as he ran by and when he got close enough, Dan quietly said to him, “C’mon, I know you’re better than this.”

  He gritted his teeth and dug down to levels of pain that caused his quads to scream with every step and his lungs to burn with each breath. His arms felt like they were filled with battery acid. His heart and chest were on the verge of bursting. Before the finish line, he moved up two more spots for a podium finish. At the end, he threw himself over the line and landed in a shallow pool of cool mud. It felt divine against his radiating skin. He was utterly spent and laid in the mud desperately trying to stabilize the oxygen and CO2 ratio in his body. Race officials picked him up by the armpits and brought him to the medical tent. His calf had been badly spiked by another runner’s shoe and was now bleeding profusely.

  His blood sugar was also dangerously low. There hadn’t been enough time to eat a proper breakfast in the morning because he didn’t want to be late to the bus. It was a new personal best time for him and it was the best he had ever placed at this meet. However, there was nothing but a sense of relief. Not happiness. Just relief.

  After he was released by the medical staff, given his medal and congratulated by his teammates, he slowly shuffled into a meek jog to cool down. For a few serene moments the calm and quiet of the cooldown routine, away from everyone else, provided a sense of freedom from the stress he had been feeling on campus – a moment just to himself and his thoughts. After five minutes of jogging alone though, Dan found and joined him. He had changed from his jeans into a pair of athletic shorts.

  “Nice run, man. You did pretty good things today.”

  “Thanks, Dan. I saw you on the course.”

  “Yea, you weren’t moving too good at that point. Although I knew that you would be faltering at that point on the course. Most people do. You did last year. I don’t know if it was so much because you sped up or the two guys in front of you slowed down. Either way though, it was well-executed. Third place is solid. Good racing, even if you weren’t the most strong I’ve seen you.”

  “Thanks for cheering me on. I appreciate it.”

  “Anytime, man. Next year I bet you’ll win this meet.”

  The two exchanged smiles.

  “Dan, I thought you would be racing today. I thought I’d get a chance to compete with you.”

  Dan grinned sheepishly, “Nah, man. I got bumped to Sectionals. Coach thought I would be better used there than here.” Sectionals was a more elite event. He hadn’t been invited to go. Maybe next year he would go, depending on how much his coach valued his performance from today. Third at Conferences was pretty good, but there was a lot of other talent on the team.

  “Well, good luck there. I’ll be sure to come watch and cheer you on.”

  “Thanks, man.” They jogged on for another two miles. Dan slowly escalated the speed of the cool down until they were really moving by the last quarter mile.

  He had tried to get schoolwork done on the bus. He opened his calculus book and promptly fell asleep in it. He woke up an hour later in a panic. They were back at school and he had wasted an hour of time. He had dreamt that he was driving and that he had spun off the road and into a ravine. The falling sensation jolted him awake. His skin was covered in a cold sweat. He felt balmy, cold and ill. The bus parked and he sprinted to the library to catch up on his work. He turned off his cell phone. No time for distractions.

  He settled into his favorite spot in the library and just as he was beginning to sense a good rhythm of productivity emerge, Dan flopped himself down in front of him.

  “You still working on this? I thought you finished it up last night. That’s when I did it.”

  “Yea, I didn’t have time. Dinner took too long.”

  “You wanna look at mine?”

  “No, I’m okay. I can get it done on my own. I need to learn this.”

  “Well, suit yourself. I’m going to grab dinner. You want something? You look like you could use it.”

  “No, no. I don’t have time. I’ll catch up with you later. And if not, I’ll see you tomorrow morning for our run.” He kept staring into his book.

  “Sounds good. I’ll see you then.”

  Afternoon became evening and evening grew into a dark night. His stomach growled with angry and demanding pangs. He grew upset with himself. He thought, ‘why are you so weak? Stop complaining and I’ll feed you soon. I need to finish this problem. I just have to get his damned lab done with.’

  One by one, every other student left the library. The building closed at 2 am and the librarian went over to him to gently remind him that the library hours were over. When she touched his shoulder he jumped. He had been listening to music and hadn’t heard her approach. His face was frightfully pale and the librarian was startled by his disheveled appearance. He was sneezing, coughing and wheezing.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “I’m fine. Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you here until this late.”

  “It’s all right, dear. I’m supposed to be here until now anyways. Are you sure you’re all right? You look pretty clammy.”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  She helped him stand up and gather his scattered books. He was staggering and bent over. She held his arm and escorted him to the front door.

  “Try and get some rest, dear. You look like you’re really coming down with something awful.”

  He opened his mouth to respond but no words came out. The cold breeze from outside blew over his face and cause him to shiver. His eyes rolled back into his head and his vision went black. Before he knew it, he was on the ground and he had pulled the librarian down with him. She started screaming.

  “Oh my! Are you all right, dear?! Nancy!” She called back into the library, “Nancy! Call someone! This boy is very sick.”

  He lay on the pavement, shivering and murmuring to himself, “Third place…trying to run like a deer…