Once A Runner

I had heard about Once A Runner, by John L. Parker, Jr., for a while and finally got my hands on a copy from the library (yay libraries). Even though I've never raced in track or cross-country meets, Parker does an amazing job of capturing the same emotions and thoughts that have run through my mind while running and about running. I guess what made this book so popular is that these experiences are pretty universal among runners. Here are some of my favorites:

• "In the mind's special processes, a ten-mile run takes far longer than the sixty minutes reported by a grandfather clock. Such time, in fact, hardly exists at all in the real world; it is all out on the trail somewhere, and you only go back to it when you are out there."

• "Quenton Cassidy knew what the mystic-runners, the joggers, the runner-poets, the Zen runners, and others of their ilk were talking about. But he also knew that their euphoric selves were generally nowhere to be seen on dark, rainy mornings. They primarily wanted to talk it, not do it, Cassidy very early on understood that a true runner ran even when he didn't feel like it, and raced when he was supposed to, without excuses and with nothing held back. He ran to win, would die in the process if necessary, and was unimpressed by those who disavowed such a base motivation. You are not allowed to renounce that which you never possessed, he thought.
  
  The true competitive runner, simmering in his own existential juices, endured his melancholia the only way he knew how: gently, together with those few others who also endured it, yet very much alone. He ran because it grounded him in basics. There was both life and death in it; it was unadulterated by media hype, trivial cares, political meddling. He suspected it kept him from that most real variety of schizophrenia that the republic was then sprouting like mushrooms on a stump.
  
  Running to him was real; the way he did it [sic] the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free."

• "It was true; he did not have the ability to give that which she most needed, and she did not have the ability to understand that eerie dimension to him that even he did not know well. These fundamental imbalances led them into concentric circles of ever decreasing size: a nautilus shell of their discontent."

• "Though the toil was arduous, they rarely spoke of the discomfort of training or racing in terms of pain; they knew that what gave pain its truly fearful dimension was a certain lack of familiarity. And these were sensations they knew very well."

• " 'I would have liked another couple of seasons, I suppose, before hanging 'em up for good, but the hell with it. Connective tissue, Quenton, that's what gets everybody in the end. Pound around asphalt America long enough and you're going to wear something out for real. We can mold the muscles, you see…' He looked down at his knees sadly.
  
  'We can strengthen the mind, temper the spirit, make the heart a goddmann turbine. But then a strand of gristle goes pop and presto you're a pedestrian'."

• "Quenton, you know how sometimes on a really bad one when you realize how it's going to be real early, like the second lap, and there's just nothing you can do about it except tuck it in and gut it out? And how hard it is for the other two who are not running to sit and watch and know what is happening and not be able to do anything about it? Christ, Cass, I've seen you go through it so many times and every time just when I think it has finally gotten to you for once and you are going to slack off on yourself a little bit, you… just come blowing out of that last turn like some goddamn maniac and I just…"

• "He had seen the drawn haunted look on his own face in midrace photographs and still he could not get that feeling; it was contained there somewhere in the glistening orb, he knew, and would never get out. Denton was right about it, you could think about it all you want but you couldn't feel it until you were there again."

• "Cassidy bore down, bore down, and finally began reeling him in, all during the final turn, all the way around he pulled him in, inch by inch, as his mouth was drawn more and more into the ugly grimace by the spastic neck muscles. Inch by inch the black suit came back until finally they broke clear of the turn and there it was: John Walton was three feet ahead of him with a hundred and ten yards of Tartan stretching out in front of them to the finish line. There was utter pandemonium in the stands as the chant degenerated into a howling, shrieking din.
  
  Quenton Cassidy moved out to the second lane, the Lane of High Hopes, and ran out the rest of the life in him."

I highly recommend this book and will return it to the library today to put it back into circulation for all you Hawaii residents. Also, if you can spare a donation, please help our public libraries stay open: http://www.friendsofthelibraryofhawaii.org/.

Next up on my list:

• Best Efforts, by Kenny Moore

• Pre: The Story of America's Greatest Running Legend, by Tom Jordan