never running far enough

Wojo, I think, knew or at least understood as my car was never ticketed nor towed. I think he took on the responsibility of being my surrogate father, waking his son up each morning to get ready for school. We laughed at Wojo then, a big reddish man with a walrus mustache and long wild hair. I had not laughed at Wojo for a long time. We shared a passion for running, not jogging as was the fad of the day but running. I stopped laughing at him the day he crossed the finish line at a local marathon, my 14 year old body setting a personal record of just under 2 and a half hours. I stood at the finish line gasping, catching my breath feeling the muscles in my body come back to life after being numb from the exertion. I was  cooled, my muscles stiffening, when I saw Wojo come around the corner. The course was 13 miles long and you ran it twice. I had finished my two laps and Wojo was just finishing his first. I hadn’t known that he ran then and I ran up to him, surprised by my admiration. He had an easy pace, slow steady and we talked sporadically and I didn’t even realize that I had gone through another half of the course.

My muscles were tearing now I had pushed them too far and told him that while I enjoyed running with him, I had to stop. He smiled that big drooping mustache molten with perspiration. He thanked me. Said he didn’t have a team like everyone else seemed to have.  Parents, friends, family supporting you as you ran, providing you with water, times, towels. I nodded, I knew what he meant. Told him I’d see him at school on Monday. And stopped, watching him run on the course a forty year old man proving to himself that he still had what it takes to take on the world. I turned to the west, without a team myself, I would have to walk the 15 miles home. My legs burned and my knees felt like there was gravel underneath my knee caps. Much later when I would become a “Wojo” I would find out that I had damaged my knees by not running properly and that the gravel feeling was the loss of cartilage in my knees. At 14 I would find that I would never be able to run far enough.