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 Download Files: Hi-res Image Web Image Bishop Paprocki prays with Life Runners before 2012 marathon in St. Louis

In 1981 when I was training, at 48, for my first marathon — the New York — a man I had just met told me, “Once you run your first marathon you will never be the same again. There are two kinds of people in the world, those who have run a marathon and those who have not.” He was right. The change is true, not merely in that it swells the head a bit: after all it is a accomplishment not everyone can claim; but it also shrinks the ego considerably: you see for the first time the many thousands of people more accomplished, healthier, better looking, more courageous than yourself. Little old and elderly men and women and smiling twelve-year olds pass you on the left and right and will be waiting for you at the finish line, and your own body, in which you have run 40 miles every week of the summer and fall, threatens to betray you. But you keep running because you have friends in the race and in the crowds, because this mobile mob of a thousand souls is dragging you along, because your father when you were five told you never be a quitter, and because you are having a good time.

Running gives you a feeling of ownership for the surrounding territory. When I traveled more, on my second day in places like Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad I would take off, running down long boulevards and along river banks and start feeling at home.

In Hanoi 20 years after the war I left my hotel for an early morning jog and discovered what seemed to be the whole city running with me — down to the urban lake where John McCain’s plane went down and in where his parachute landed him and a bunch of young men gathered around to quiz me: what was I doing here? “I have come to see you,” I should have answered, but couldn’t think of it then.

Running also gives you a chance to pray. When I see runners with earphones plugged in I think they are retreating into a private world based on someone else’s noise, screening out the various wonders and sounds of creation through which the Spirit tries to enter.

Why would the Boston bomber want to ruin all this? Kill and blow off the legs of men and women he has never met, shatter this physical and spiritual unity binding millions to one another? As this is written we do not know who is responsible. My own feeling is that it may not be a terrorist in the political sense but some sick, loveless soul with a wound of his own who may kill himself before our questions are answered.

Meanwhile I believe we will respond by running more, that the coming New York Marathon and next year’s Boston will call out greater crowds, not just to affirm the “American spirit,” but to testify to the friendships running has produced.

I ran the New York Marathon because when I was dean of Rockhurst College in Kansas City a student signed me up for a local half marathon without telling me, then joined me for the race. For the first time a realized I could actually run 13 miles. The next year, when I was dean of Holy Cross, a student friend literally tackled me and told me I would run the coming New York Marathon with him. For the next three years, joined by student friends, I ran the Boston, and in 1985 the New Jersey marathon. For all these races, we never qualified or registered; we just got at the end of the line and ran. About 8 years ago two discs in my spinal column slipped out and impinged on the spinal chord. The operation ended my running life. Now I take long walks, and when the New York Marathon jogs into Central Park I watch with special admiration as the handicapped, the blind, those in wheelchairs and their friends pass by with the same determination and pride as the stars who crossed the finish line four hours before.

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Matt Emerson
10 years 11 months ago

A great essay. It inspires me both to write and run a marathon.

Keyran Moran
10 years 11 months ago
Ray, a delightful reflection and memoir of the special world of the marathon, but I think the German commentator on their Channel 2 (ZDF) summed up the motivations of the two Moslem young men. He claimed (and I believe him) that it a number of Moslems find themselves being put down by what has to be called the Pragmatic Racism of America's War Party. I say pragmatic because I know of "liberal" Zionists who criticize this infectious sickness, but look the other way because they want to believe the hysteria that it is Israel which is endangered and not the billion Moslems in the world. The truth is that the Israel-USA coalition is based on New Sanctified Racism--the irony of which is clear. In Germany where there are three recognized racism(s): two Sanctified and/or Pragmatic and one ugly or the ugliest of versions: the Holocaust. The two Sanctified types are: the preaching even by Germans of the obligation of all Germans young or old to be guilty everyday of their lives for sins of their grandparents or parents, i.e. guilty as Germans and therefore SILENT and the second is of course: a version of Daniel Piper's fear and hatred for Moslems which allows the Europeans and Americans to look the other way at the slaughter of the 400+ youngsters in Gaza--because, after all, this race of people are inherently hostile and indeed barbaric. Listen to NBC any day of the week and two principal commentators on foreign policy and the banner every time there is a slanted story on Iran: IRAN THREAT.

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