"Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence." Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

At a club luncheon, during chat about a guest's adventure in a big road race, Circus Impressario puts in his two-cents worth. "I'd like to start running. I don't get enough exercise."

A brief silence grips the table like a hitch in the stride of a jogger struck by a muscle cramp.

The 40ish Circus precedes himself wherever he goes with a potbelly. He lards his conversation with eye tics as if his contacts forever slip out of place. The demands of his work send him speeding from franchise to franchise in different cities in a long van painted with a logo of a rainbow tent. In his breathless rush he leaves an impression he'd have trouble recognizing, even with his contacts in place, a chance to relax, let alone to exercise. He's a good guy, a hail-fellow-well-met, but he's no health nut.

Before the silence breaks, the guest, Half Marathon, at a loss for a reply, glances toward the diner on her right, Office Jones. A club regular with a tall and slender frame under a business suit, Jones has a habit of making offhand remarks about his forays into the out-of-doors.

He jumps into the breach left by Half. "You've got to start slow. Don't expect to go out the first time and run miles and miles. You've got to work up to it. Do a mile the first time; heck, do a quarter-mile. Then give yourself a couple days off. It'll hurt the next time you run."

Circus looks daunted already. Or maybe it's just slippage of his contacts. "It'll hurt?"

Half's back in stride. "Not much. When I started training, the first time I wanted to try a race, I knocked off 10 miles on day one, and I didn't even know enough to stretch beforehand. I was still a teenager, of course, and I was already in shape for other sports. But I've never stopped running in 26 years since. I run every day."

Looking as if he'd like to take back the comment that started the discussion, Circus turns to Jones. "You run every day?"

"Not on your life. I jog now and then to keep an edge on my fitness. My thing is to go for 5-mile trail hikes with a 40-pound backpack, in the mountains if I can. What I like about running is a feeling I get of being in touch with nature. There's something primitive about it, something sacred. It makes the outdoors feel unspoiled. I lose that feeling if I run too often."

Circus looks as if he's decided that club luncheons give him all the exercise he wants. "A 40-pound backpack?"

The origin of a runner is as shrouded in mystery as the origin of life. The runner's inspiration varies from man to man, from woman to woman, from child to child. All have their own peculiar reasons for lacing up the shoes.

If they even wonder about motivations, their theories differ just as beliefs about the origins and purpose of life differ from culture to culture, scarcely touching upon first causes.

Runners range from mystics to philosophers to scientists, just as civilizations range from mystic to philosophic to scientific.

If the club of runners has a single unifying trait, something reducible to a running theory of everything, it's as elusive as the fond dream of physics for a grand unification, a cosmic theory of everything, a single principle that ties together and explains all the forces of the known universe.

The destination of a runner is as shrouded in mystery as the destination of life.

False Start

At age 14 Mickey Wicked discovers during a Relay for Life with his mother, a cancer survivor, that he runs around the track over and over with little effort or fatigue while others walk.

Mickey approaches his uncle, Moore Wicked. "I think I'm pretty good at running. I like it. Can I go to your track club next time you go?"

Moore has doubts. "This is no jog on an oval we're talking about. It's a race. And it's usually at a middle distance. Maybe you and I better go for a trial run first. Say, four miles."

Mickey runs like a yearling deer beside Moore for a while. When his legs begin to feel leaden, he drops a few paces back, and his uncle turns around like an old buck urging a fawn to keep up or fall to the wolves. Proud to have gone the distance, Mickey takes his uncle's invitation to join the club as his due.

None of the older people, from teenagers up, his uncle among them, dwindling ahead of him at the races like deer fleeing into dusk from headlights, hurt his confidence. For each one who vanishes ahead, another falls behind.

Then during the longest race of the series, on a hot day in summer, his head goes dizzy in the first mile, his stomach goes acid in the second, his calves go as tight as steel bands in the third. He's forced to drop out.

The next week, when Moore calls to arrange to pick him up, Mickey has a ready excuse. "I'm going hunting with dad."

He grows expert in the ways of game, in the tension of a bow, in the balance of a fishing pole, in the pulse of the wild. He walks for miles through woods without breaking a sweat or flagging from shortness of breath. But he never again takes a running step on a track or trail or road.

The ancient Greeks had a legend about a boy who failed at too great a task at too young an age. Phaeton, son of the god Apollo and the mortal Clymene, wanted to prove himself by driving his father's chariot of the sun for one day.

Bulfinch's Mythology quotes Apollo as warning Phaeton, "In your ignorance you aspire to do that which not even the gods themselves may do. None but myself may drive the flaming car of day."

Nevertheless Apollo gave in to Phaeton's begging. The boy lost control of the horses, causing the chariot to burn the zodiacal figures in the heavens and to scorch and crack the earth.

Thomas Bulfinch, of Boston in the 19th century, could have had in mind an overheated runner in the midst of a race in his sketch of Phaeton in the careening chariot: "He grew pale and his knees shook with terror. In spite of the glare all around him, the sight of his eyes grew dim."

Phaeton died in a fall to earth.

Phidippides, the ancient Greek military courier, contrary to modern legend, did not run the approximately 26.2 miles from the Plain of Marathon to Athens to proclaim a victory over the Persians in 490 B.C.

Instead, according to the historian Herodotus, he covered about 150 miles to Sparta in two days before the battle to ask for aid. He did not die from marathon exhaustion.

Instead, by his own account, he met with the god of the wilds, great Pan, on his way back to Athens. Being a child of the age of heroes, he stuck to his assignment with the even-if-it-kills-me perseverance of Phaeton, refusing to be diverted even by the divine.

In the modern age Phidippides might have turned aside like Mickey with a blithe rationale: "I'm going hunting with Pan."

Office Jones lines up on the side of Mickey. "Who needs marathons, anyhow? You can't open yourself to the spirit of Mother Earth when you're hitting a wall at 20 miles. Go for a hike in the woods. Let the birds tell you who you are. You might even meet a god."

Training Season

Little Slip decides at age 55 to find out if she can run a marathon. Even after years of sitting at a desk in a county building, even after becoming a grandmother several times over, she's never put on an ounce of fat; she still has the bony figure of a girl.

When two of her young co-workers and three other women from the city begin building toward a fall marathon, Little admires their sociability and their adventurousness, and asks to make the group a half-dozen.

Within a few weeks she finds she skims along as if on air as her partners, heavier if younger, thunder over the ground. As race day draws closer she goes off on her own some days to increase her tempo.

The marathon goes like clockwork. She heeds all the admonitions about nutrition and hydration and, having no preconceived pace, reserves her energy for the back half; thus she feels scarcely a trace of fluid or oxygen debt. She finishes in under four hours and knows she could have shaved off minutes with an aggressive front half. All her post- race soreness fades in a few days.

Thereafter she devotes one week of vacation each year to travel to some scenic place in North America for a marathon.

Jay Waterspeaker, the fastest master in the city, tracks her down to ask her to join his team of over-40s for the Silver Lake Relay. Little's clueless. "What's that?'

"The relay? It's a team marathon. Four people run five miles and one runs a 10K."

"That's hardly a warmup."

"It's a challenge with a team. Everybody wants to do their best for the others. It's fun."

"When is it?"

"The second Saturday in August."

"Oh. Sorry. I'm not running then." Since Jay's visibly confused, she elaborates. "I only do fall marathons. I start training about 10 weeks beforehand. It's the Grand Rapids Marathon this year, so I'll start, oh, the third week in August."

"You don't run at all the rest of the year?"

"No."

Jay walks away shaking his head and muttering.

Native Americans likely never trained in a formal way for running. Yet tribes such as the Tarahumara of the mountains of Mexico had traditions of endurance racing. Tarahumara men claimed to cover 100 miles at elevation while kicking a ball.

Origin stories among Native Americans included accounts of mythic races. Richard Erdoes recorded such a tale of the Cheyenne in 1968, printing it as "The Great Race" in "American Indian Myths and Legends," a book in collaboration with Alfonso Ortiz.

The tale explained how buffalo challenged the Cheyenne to a test of power. Because buffalo had four legs and people had two, several animals raced in the latter's stead, including a participant all the others dismissed as of no account.

"This was magpie, a slow bird but strong-hearted and persevering." After all the other animals fell by the wayside, magpie nipped buffalo at the finish. "And ever since the people have respected the magpie, never hunting it or eating it. So the people became more powerful than the buffalo ..."

Little Slip nods recognition on hearing the story. "Yeah. I could be the magpie. That sounds like me. Slow but strong-hearted."

Jones is skeptical. "Not a match. No. It's a stretch to put a woman who works at a desk and trains for 10 weeks a year in the same class as Western Indians. She breathes filtered air and stares at a computer screen with a coffee cup at her elbow. They breathe fresh mountain air and go on vision quests with buttons of peyote in their packs. She visits nature. They live in it. Better luck next time."

Evening Affair

Sister Springstep attends a party on New Year's Eve at the home of a do-gooder couple from her soft-hearted set. Sis already knows most of the bleeding-hearts sipping drinks in the kitchen or nibbling treats in the dining room.

Just before the crowd gathers around card tables for a game of dice, uncharacteristically cutthroat, to fill the hours before countdown, her host, Trick Truthteller, a babysitter by calling for the snottiest teenagers in town, introduces her to a stranger, Elgin Pennyman, a mouthpiece by trade for the dirtiest grownups in the county.

After midnight, while Trick keeps a watchful eye, Elgin cozies up to Sis on the stairs in order to get the new year off to a rousing start. Trick steers the conversation toward an innocent topic. "Elgin's quite a runner."

Sis asks the mouthpiece, "Are you serious about that, too?"

"Nah. I go to a lot of races every year, but a lot of guys beat me all out hollow. Trick and I get together for an easy four-miler every now and then, and you know how slow he is."

Trick says, "I'm not in his league. I can't keep up with him."

Sis says, "Neither can I."

Elgin asks her, "You run?"

"Yes."

"You and I ought to get together for a workout."

"Oh, I doubt it would be any good for you. I do my three miles on Sunday mornings."

Elgin's pause stretches to several seconds. "Three miles a week?"

"Three miles a week."

Hawaiians, living on a string of specks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, each island barely large enough for elbow room let alone running space, carried over few if any references to running among the origin myths from the centuries before Captain Cook turned their world inside-out.

But Hawaiian legends featured a tale of romance and racing: Moikeha meets Hooipo. King David Kalakaua, survivor of an ancient monarchy, retold the couple's history in his 1888 book "The Legends and Myths of Hawaii: The Fables and Folk-Lore of a Strange People."

The royal maiden Hooipo, indecisive or indifferent about her suitors, let her father, Puna, arrange a race among pretenders for her hand. The contestants would see who could fetch a talisman from across the water.

While Moikeha, on a grand tour of the islands, visited Puna before the race, he and Hooipa sized each other up. "... (H)e was so charmed by her bright eyes that he did not leave the mansion until he found occasion to exchange a few pleasant words with her."

As she watched him launch his canoe on the ocean, she doubted his chances to win the race for the talisman, but she needn't have worried. "Moikeha's long-haired companion was Laamaomao, god of the winds." Jones gets positively heated over the twice-told tale. "Now wait right there. That's a beautiful legend. A deserving young couple of equal birth has a date with destiny, helped by the kindness of nature. But it couldn't possibly have anything to do with Sister Springstep and Elgin Pennyman."

Still Some Distance to Go

Oh ye of little faith. You pry out the weaknesses of any argument.

You've seen through the caveat, Jones, that mythology might do as an equivalent for the origins of runners like Mickey or Little. But it won't do for the differences between Sister and Elgin. It won't do, either, for the growth of runners such as Moore Wicked or Jay Waterspeaker ... not to mention the perfection of runners as yet untold.

For that we need philosophy.

For that we need science.

To be continued