The Last Half Mile
I trained for six weeks for the Riverside 5K in Sacramento. Three miles, ten dollars a mile, all of it for the children’s ward at St. Mary’s. Not a hard activity, my brother said.
He was wrong.
At mile two, everything was fine. I took a cup at the water station, drank half of it and dropped the rest on the road like everybody else.
At mile two and a half, I stepped on somebody else’s cup.
It was a small accident. My foot turned, I heard something in my ankle, and then I was sitting on the road with people running past me.
A man in a yellow jacket got to me fast. He touched my ankle and I shouted.
“It’s not broken,” he said. “But my advice is stop. There’s a van at the corner. It’ll take you back.”
I looked at the van. Then I looked at the road. A hundred yards ahead, a girl in a pink shirt was walking too.
“I’m going to finish,” I said.
He didn’t argue. He walked back to the van.
I walked the last half mile. It took twenty-four minutes. The van came slowly behind me the whole way, and it never passed me. When I crossed the line, the man sounded the horn twice.