(Based on
Coover’s "Going for a Beer")
She
finds herself ellipting at the neighborhood gym dreaming of running on the
treadmill at about the same time she’s proud that first mile is halfway done. In
fact, she’s finished it. Perhaps she’ll have a second one, she thinks as she
runs another two miles and plans for a fourth. There is a poster on the wall
not far from her for a 5k that is not cheap but cheap enough and probably fun
to run, which indeed it is. Did she finish that whole chocolate bar? Pretty
likely. What really matters is, did she recover fast enough? Did she even ache? Was the race shirt worth it? This she is wondering on her way home from
that next 5k, through the snowy roads of her worn down village, which was full
of races, the sort won by youngsters, though she made a date, as she recalls,
to go to another one, where she gets another shirt. She has a hankering for
this. Whereupon she’s at a race again, a 10k this time, taking off from the pack.
She excitedly passes strollers, walkers, joggers, stuffing her new T-shirts
into a dresser heaped with them. She
can’t remember when she last ellipted, and she’s no longer sure, as she trots
through the night streets, where her sanity is, if she ever had any, already
fading from memory. Maybe she should run a second 12k, where she gets another
T-shirt, and this time stays for chocolate and a steaming coffee at the big tent
on the course commiserating with other runners before she starts that half
marathon. Where another dream starts
hassling her and she ends up in her bed, covered in race shirts, as she leaves
the house in the early morning hours, uncertain what road is calling her. Or
what part of year. She decides that it’s
time to call off the plan – it’s driving her knee crazy – but then the resolve shows
up and the trainer laughs at the pounding he’s given her. He didn’t realize, he
says, how much she could take. The
trainer’s present is a promise of two strong legs at the gym where she runs,
and a stable core to support her hopes. She has big dreams now and decides after
the fourteen-miler to check whether she still has the bureau space she first
had when she started this mess. She doesn’t.
It’s embarrassing and the atmosphere is somewhat fantastical she thinks
as she sees a poster for that 30k. Is she signing up or heading back home?
She’s not sure, but on arrival she collects her new shirt and runs when the gun
goes off. One of her knees is crying so she starts to limp and stuffs a bag
with ice and opens the computer to look for solutions and discovers another message,
from her trainer, which says that he’ll meet her at the starting line because
he’s going to bring a stop watch and he better not find her slacking off
because if he does he’s going to get out the boxing gloves. She believes him so
soon she’s out on the streets again, wondering if she ever put that ice on her
knee and if her shoulder muscles could ache any harder and her lungs expand while
her knuckles bleed. So she bandages them and hits the mitts again for thirty
seconds, forty seconds, three hours forty minutes and that first twenty-miler
is in the books. She passes the old
neighborhood gym and is tempted but decides she ‘s had enough cross training
for one lifetime and is about to trot on when her good sense stops her and her
head tells her to climb on the elliptical and pedal until her legs are mush and
she believes she’s ready so she’s out on the streets again, wondering if that
Advil is going to kick in or if she remembered to take it as she finishes the
twenty-two miler and eats another chocolate and gulps gallons of water because
before she knows it she’ll be in her corral. She’s right. After a ton more
elliptical hours, and five boxing
sessions some painfully remembered, she’s at the start and wonders if she’s
ready but the gun’s gone off and it’s time to move. So she shrugs and moves forward slow then fast
then slow until the finish line where she cries and breathless, accepts the
medal which is hanging above her bed as she limps to the gym in her new race shirt
where she finds herself ellipting, though she’s dreaming of running, at about
the same time that her next marathon is done. If she was ever there in the
first place because she’s out there again, hankering and hoping because
well. . . you know. . . marathons.
