The Marathon

The point of view of one young man as he runs a marathon

It was the day of the big marathon, and the runners were all in their positions, ready to start. People were entering from all over the county. Alex was excited, because he loved to run. He was an 18 year-old male, so his division was one of the most competitive, and he knew that. Soon enough, he heard the signal, and the marathon started. Just as he started to run, he accidentally kicked his front foot with his back foot, which took him off his guard, and caused him to stumble a little bit. After a few seconds, he restored his balance, and was ready to start running. As he started to run though, everyone else was already quite a good distance ahead.

Alex looked up ahead, saw everyone else running ahead of where he was, and was disappointed. He started to lose his enthusiasm for the marathon, and decided to walk a little bit. Soon enough, the people ahead of him were getting further and further away. Eventually, he was so annoyed by the fact that everyone was getting so far ahead of him, that he decided to pick up the pace, and start running again. It was much harder now, since he had already wasted so much energy, and because he had started to run again before his body was really ready to, he started to get a cramp in his stomach. This slowed him down some more, but he still kept running, even with the cramp.

It was starting to drain on him, and he started thinking about what was happening. Physically, he was putting in more energy than anyone else, because it was coming so much easier for them. Emotionally, it was much harder, because he had to deal with the knowledge that he was in dead last right now. On top of this, the idea that he had so much more of the marathon left to run, while everyone else had far less of the marathon remaining for them, discouraged him even further. For the other runners, the fact that they were doing so well and had far less of the marathon left to run, was probably very encouraging. These thoughts were distracting to Alex, and were getting in the way of his focus. He couldn’t think about what he was supposed to be doing.

He knew that he had to stop thinking these things if he was going to finish the marathon, so he started now to focus only on running. He was able to focus for a little bit, until he got to a specific area in the woods. There was a small river-like area, like a moat, only with mud instead of water. He saw where there was a small wooden bridge over the moat, but it was broken now. It must have been a weak, unstable bridge, because it had crashed when the other runners ran over it. There were a lot of runners, and that ended up hindering Alex’s run even further. The more people there were, the more damage was being done to that bridge that Alex now needed, and didn’t have. If he had gotten to this point earlier, it would have been there, but now it was not.

Alex ran into the moat, through the mud, and back out of the other side. He had lost some more time on that, and now his shoes, socks, and ankles were muddy, which was uncomfortable to him, and made the run even harder. Still, he kept going, until he made it out of the woods, and back onto the street again. He reached a small table on the side of the street, where an older woman was handing out plastic cups of water to the runners. He was excited, because he desperately needed it. As he got closer to the table, he saw that there were no cups there. The woman had given them all away by the time Alex got to the table. This meant that on top of everything else, the other runners were now more hydrated than he was. This was sure to help them out, and hurt him, even further.

This caused him to start walking again. At this point he knew the whole marathon was a waste. He had completely messed it up this whole time. It was hopeless to even kept trying at this point. He had this thought for almost a half hour before he realized that he wasn’t doing himself any favors by thinking this way. He had to keep running, and so he did. He ran fast for a little while, and then even faster. He kept going until eventually, he slipped, and fell on the ground. He looked around him, and saw a bunch of plastic cups in every direction. There was also a bunch of water, which must have been what he slipped on. The runners ahead of him must have just dumped their water and thrown their cups around, all in this area. He sat up, looked ahead, and saw more cups and water on the ground even further down the line.

Alex lied back down on the ground. He thought about how it wasn’t fair that because he stumbled in the beginning, all of this other stuff keeps piling on top. He wondered how long he was going to have to pay for that one mistake. He figured it was just going to keep coming. One moment it’s the cramps, then the bridge, then the water. There was just no end to it, and he had already messed up the race so badly that there was no way to recover. He wondered why everyone else got to start the race well, and ran the race just as well the entire time, without any real troubles at all, while he had to stumble early on. He wondered why, out of all the people who could’ve stumbled it had to be him. He thought about the randomness of a simple mistake, and how that doomed him for the entire marathon.

He thought back to various aspects of his life. He thought about his father who was an alcoholic, who no one in his family talked to anymore. He thought about the weird kid in school he and his friends always made fun of. This kid was always doing inconsiderate things, seemingly unintentionally, and he would talk about how he experienced flashbacks of the taunting even years later, even after he learned not to be more considerate. Alex thought about his sister, who wasn’t able to get the job she wanted because of one incident of vandalism she had in high school. All of this was too much to think about for Alex, and so his mind went back to the race. He figured his only two options were to either walk miserably to the end, or to quit the marathon right where he was. The idea of the former was so miserable to him that he almost chose the latter option.

Then, he realized something. He realized how stupid it was for one mistake to determine everything else. Even though that was the way it was, it was still stupid. He knew that now. He was smarter than this entire ridiculous set-up of this marathon. The entire design was illogical and nonsensical, but it had ruined his run. He realized that he could’ve just scoffed at every stupid thing that had happened, and kept running. It didn’t have to hurt his race. As much as the design of this race, and the other runners, did to discourage him, to destroy him, and to devalue him as a runner, despite there being no logical grounds for them to do that, he didn’t have to let it happen.

He now realized all of that, and there was nothing that could’ve gotten to him anymore.

He got up, and started to jog slowly. Then, he started to run. He was running faster than ever now. He took note of the water on the ground and ran right over it. There was a large stick on the ground, which tripped him up a little bit, but it didn’t matter. He just kept going as fast as he could. He was making up time now. It was very late in the marathon, but he was doing it. He was getting tired, but he didn’t let it bother him. After a long time, he caught up with some of the other runners. Then he ran right past them. He was more encouraged than ever. He had realized that it was up to him whether he wanted to do well in this marathon, and that it didn’t have to be up to the structure of the race, or the other runners anymore. He was back in the race.