Cornball Runner Redux

Ahh, the memories. The music, the crowds, waitaminute. Last year, I was training for a marathon at about this time and I revealed how goofily I think as I try to keep my feet moving. It worked just a year ago, but not so far this year. It's still early and I'm out of shape and struggling. Last year, not so. Here's what I wrote then:

OK, I'm a complete cornball runner. Not my gait or stride, but how I motivate myself to run, and this is something I hardly ever discuss because it reveals how profoundly American and dreamily dumb I can be. First, let's take the music, which I need in the early part of training. Songs motivating me right now range from Sonic Youth's Kool Thing to Enigma's Eyes of Truth. Also in the mix is Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes, Seal's Crazy, and Moby's Alone. It's the rhythm that primarily counts. And the songs get me imagining what I typically always imagine: winning some prestigious marathon, usually the Boston Marathon, sometimes the Twin Cities Marathon. Here's a typical script from my head, and seriously folks, this is what I think about at some point on each long run, usually while listening to Enigma, all timed to various dramatic points in the song:

It's late in the marathon, about mile 19 or 20. The camera is low to the ground and at the top of a hill. Heat waves are coming off the pavement. Bobbing heads start to come into focus: two Kenyan runners, obviously on a record pace, their bodies rising as they come over the crest of the hill. Suddenly, I appear just behind the Kenyans, then move to the side, and the announcers go crazy. Who is that guy? My God, he's keeping up with the Kenyans. He can't last, he can't last. Even other regular runners on the course stop to listen to radios or watch the race on big screen televisions. No one can believe this unknown American kid is competing with the Kenyans. I'm just behind them, actually talking to them, sort of trash talking in Swahili, saying they can't beat me. We come down Beacon Street and into Kenmore Square in Boston, the huge crowds ecstatic. We race down Comm Ave and turn first at Dartmouth and then left for the final stretch down Boylston Street. The announcers have finally identified me and people from my hometown twenty some years ago have now turned on their televisions because, somehow on a Monday or Sunday at 10 a.m., they heard I was about to win. People who never believed in me suddenly see me in a new light, every person who ever slighted me is, remarkably, watching me on television. And then I pass the Kenyans and blaze down the final 385 yards to win the race, usually setting a new world record. I then collapse and sob.

That's the general vision, though there are lots of variations. Like, it's the Olympic Marathon and I make my move in the tunnel into the stadium, with the crowd going crazy as me and a Tanzanian runner come out of the dark and onto the track. Or, in the late 1980's, I would beat Rob de Castella, the Australian marathoner. Yes, I always win. And sometimes I get a call from the U.S. President, which I refuse. I then fade into history, never winning another race, never to be heard from again.