Running for Your Life: A Tribute/4:06:09

After a certain age we don’t have babies. But if we take care of ourselves, we can run marathons.

Last year I ran Boston. The weather was in the mid-80s, unbearably hot on the city streets. But it was like a party and we runners were the lords and ladies, the rock stars, the heroes. The cheering and good feeling so infectious that despite the pain and punishing heat, so many of us scaled Heartbreak Hill without stopping and managed to cross the finish line in the triumphant spirit shown in the photo at right. Like having a baby, it was an achievement of a lifetime.

I confess to having been unaware of the day yesterday (April 15), the 117th running of the Boston Marathon. I had not qualified for this event, so my attentions were elsewhere when I saw the first images, most especially the one that has been repeated again and again, showing the finish line where I was so deliriously happy a year ago, and the time on the race clock: 4:06:09. Only minutes later than when I ran across the line a year ago.

I weep for those who died, the suffering and the loved ones. There are no words. But hopefully many attempts at them, because to my mind words claim the sacred space that viral videos on smartphones defile.

Consider the phrase: 4:06:09. Meditate on it. We pause now to weep, to think on 4:06:09, and the lives that have been lost and changed. Lace up your sneakers and start with a walk. Soon, the training begins anew, with the promise of the finish line ahead.