The Marathon

It is half past seven on a cold October morning in Chicago, and Francisca is standing at the start line with forty thousand other runners. She has been training for this day for eight months. She has been getting up at five, running in the dark before work and eating more pasta than anyone else in Santiago. Her friends have been asking her the same question all year: "Why are you doing this?" She still doesn't have a good answer.

The race starts and the huge crowd of runners moves slowly forward. For the first ten miles, everything feels easy. Francisca keeps a steady pace, drinks water at every station and smiles at the people who are cheering on the sidewalks. Some of them are holding funny signs. One says "Run like you stole something". Another says "Your legs will hate you tomorrow". She laughs and keeps going.

At mile fifteen, a cold wind starts blowing from the lake, and at mile eighteen her right knee begins to hurt. By mile twenty, every step is painful. Runners call this moment "hitting the wall", and Francisca has hit it hard. She slows down to a walk, then stops completely at the side of the road. Six more miles, she thinks. I can't do it. I've been running for more than three hours and I have nothing left.

She is looking around for a medical tent when she notices an old man in a blue jacket. He is holding a piece of cardboard with large, careful letters: "You have been training for months. Don't let six miles take that away from you." He isn't cheering or shouting like the others. He is just standing there quietly, watching the runners who have stopped.

Francisca reads the sign twice. She thinks about the dark winter mornings, the rain, the birthday parties she left early because she had a long run the next day. The old man sees her and nods, as if he knows exactly what she is thinking. "How long have you been standing here?" she asks. "Since eight o'clock," he answers. "My daughter ran this race last year. She stopped right here, in this exact place. Then she finished."

Francisca starts running again, slowly at first. Her knee still hurts, but she counts the miles one by one: twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. When she turns the last corner and sees the finish line, she is crying and laughing at the same time. Her time is four hours and fifty-two minutes, much slower than she planned, but she doesn't care at all.

That night, she calls her mother in Chile. "So, have you found an answer? Why did you do it?" her mother asks. Francisca looks at the medal on the hotel table and thinks about the old man. "I'm still not sure," she says. "But next year, I'm going to make a sign."