Marathons that Matter

Life is a marathon, not a sprint - some guy who never ran a marathon in his life.

I have run a marathon, two in fact, along with about 10 half-marathons. Last Sunday, I ran my first marathon relay, teaming up with Mary-Gay, Wes, and David P. to form the team Three Straight Guys and a Mary-Gay. We took second place in the mixed gender division, lagging the leaders by a mere 30 minutes, but besting the 3rd place team by a full 6 seconds. I'd like to think that skipping the 3rd water stop on my 5.5 mile leg made the difference between silver and bronze.

But the marathon I want to talk about is the metaphorical one, not a real one, even though I am running in another half marathon this coming Saturday in Savannah. It's who I'm running with that brings the topic back to life, as in lifelong friends. You see, while Team 3SGAAM-G have known each other for 6 years or less, my friendships with Danny G., David S, and Luis G, easily total over 100 years (or if you prefer, a good 4 marathons worth of years.) I used to go to David's birthday parties when we were 2 and 3. We moved in a few doors down form Danny in 1973, and I seem to recall meeting Luis on the playground at Kittredge that same year.

By the time we were in high school together, we became a foursome. Well, there were others we hung out with regularly too, like Gregg, David C., Paul, Goofy, etc. but if I had to pick the core group, the four of us were it. We had much in common - we were reasonably "good" kids, with dark hair, Jewish (actually Luis isn't, but we passed him off at more than one party as Luis Schwartz from Baltimore and nobody doubted it for a minute). We had our first beers together, followed by a few hundred more. We drove crappy cars to even crappier jobs, then cruised around on weekends, going to midnight movies with one-handed ticket takers and making lists of the prettiest girls we knew, a couple of whom apparently read this blog from time to time.

We stayed tight right through college, with three of us in Athens and David down on North Avenue back when it was safe to walk around the campus. As often happens, we drifted a bit in our twenties, some moving far from home, then we started getting married, having babies, etc. But we all ended up back in Atlanta, 3 of us within a short run of the old 'hood and Luis  about a marathon away, give or take a couple miles. Now we're going to pile into what I hope is a slightly less crappy car and head down to Savannah where I suspect the post-race celebration will be more memorable than the race itself.

I'm looking forward to shuffling down River Street with three lifelong friends, reminiscing about bad teachers, cheap drinks, and whatever happened to all the pretty girls on that list.