Runner Up: Austin Henderson

Balancing Act
Austin Henderson

While running, I noticed I was strangely isolated, even in a herd of people. The only view of another runner I saw was of their back; not once did I see another face. A marathon runner told me that during the race she had spent over three hours running with a man, but afterwards wouldn’t have been able to identify his face.

Around halfway through the race, I began to wish I had brought a companion. In front of me a pair of friends merrily loped, chatting as they ran. Several miles of this got me a little bit lonely; they looked so very happy and just twenty feet behind them I was languishing as my iPod headphones fizzled out from the sweat pooling inside my ears.

For me, the appeal of running is that it’s a non-competitive sport. There is no direct opponent whose success means my defeat, and the only person who really matters when deciding how I will perform is myself. So just like with almost anything in life, a balancing act emerges between achievement and enjoyment, with myself being the only acrobat on the wire.

Not that there’s much room for balancing acts at my level of ability. Had I brought a friend, my running would have been worse. I’m barely in shape enough to just run the whole course. Talking on top of that would have inevitably led to me dropping off and walking, which to me equals failure. If I had more physical capacity, I might reach a level where I could both run the marathon and enjoy myself. While I was running, it became obvious that I had not reached that level. My shoulders, my feet, my knees, and my gut all ached, and I was lost in motion, dizzy in the sun. All I could do was follow the two friends running in front of me.

They kept perfect pace, always in front and confident in their strides. As long as I kept them right there, I knew I would be okay. I didn’t need direct companionship or support: merely keeping up with a couple of people who looked like real athletes drove me. Just as being in a class with a valedictorian can inspire an underachieving student, I saw my own potential through them. That spurred me to ignore the pain, cease dwelling on my self-pity and loneliness, and just run.

Around mile ten or eleven, the friends split up, one of them cruising off at an absurd pace and the other slowing down a little bit. This was the farthest I had ever run in my life and for some reason I felt great. It felt wrong in a way to pass the slower of the pair, because without her I would’ve been walking a few miles behind, sucking energy gel out of defeated hands. I’m sure she didn’t care at all and didn’t even know me; she had never turned around to see the faces of those following her. Passing her meant the collapse of my symbol – the ideal runner I’d created in front of me was not actually faster or stronger than me. Or maybe, I thought, she was truly better, but decided to slow down and listen to the river.