Midlife Meditation

Ouch. It's a misty morning in November, 1999, and I'm approaching the finish line of the Seattle Marathon. I've been running for nearly five hours, my slowest time ever for this distance. I'm 38 years old, with a receding hairline, a trick ankle, and plantar fasciitis, and my world is slowly turning itself upside down. My second marriage ended four months ago. On the drive home from this race, I will call a woman I've been seeing in Olympia, hoping to drop in, only to be told it's over between us. In two weeks, I will be in a major accident, nearly totaling the new car I can't really afford anyway. And in two months, the United Methodist Church where I am associate pastor will move heaven and earth to get me out. So why am I doing this to myself? With all the things happening over which I have no control, why am I willingly putting my body through one of the toughest ordeals in amateur athletics? Am I nuts? Kind of, but not really. My pre-race ritual...

    Marathons are storytelling gold. Here I am, posing next to my baby daughter Sarah (she's under the blanket in the stroller) just before my first marathon, The Potteries in Stoke-on-Trent, Father's Day, 1989: And here's the after shot, again with Sarah, one of her blankets covering my badly sunburned shoulders, my aching feet clad only in socks, me barely conscious, she sleeping in my arms:   I had no idea what I was getting into when I signed up for that marathon. It was still early in my running career--I'd been doing it for less than five years, and had only run in one other race, a 5K--and I was still gauging the lengths of my runs (and the speed with which I ran them) by counting steps. In 1985, I had taken a few loops on the track at Willamette, and decided I was taking 700 steps to run a mile. I had no notion at all of the variability of stride length, and my experience in the 5K bore it out. Of course, running all out for twenty minutes, my...