The Logic of Long Distance

[Editor's note:]   I had just put on my flats for that most glorious of runner's runs, the October morning tempo. The brilliant fall leaves out my window brought to mind the flashing of spikes and the copper taste of hard effort that we runners associate with the season. I opened the door and was slammed by the stench of stale whisky. There was a bottle laying there with a note stuffed inside. In the bushes were scattered loose papers. Apparently the good doctor RVT had dropped by during his daily stupor and left me a gift. I picked up the bottle, shook out the note, and deciphered the scrawl: "If Weldon and Robert are too shaken by our Fear fiasco where we had to tell Various lawyers to climb back in their ambulances and read up on Defamation law, we can always shop this piece down our Purple Cow pipeline to fellow Eph Tim Layden at Sports Illustrated.   I'm sure they have a battery of lawyers bigger than Penn State's attorneys in the Paterno pool." ...

Ted, Justin, and I got together for a run sometime in mid-August. As we headed out, Ted tossed out the suggestion to form a team and run a series of local college cross-country races. Considering that I'd been running but not really training, I gave him some non-committal answer like, "Sounds cool, I'll think about it." We ran on. It was a brutally hot day, and we were all struggling a bit. None of us was in great shape, drained physically and psychologically by the Nashville summer. By the end of the run, I was just glad to be done, feeling totally flattened by an easy 6 miler. Afterwards, Ted asked again if I was up for racing. "Maybe," I said. Ted just sorta looked at me for a few moments, then he said this: "When your college coach told you there was a race coming up, did you tell him that 'maybe' you'd be ready? Hell no, you got on the line and raced." Put it on the line.  So, this was how I found myself two weeks la...