Dan Kelsey, no. 2056, runs through the rain at the 2004 Spectrum Irish Jig

From the back seat, through the open door on my right, I watched a knot of people approach the car in which I waited. Today I have no memory of what brought our group together or where we were bound on a spring day in 1974.

A young man walking within the knot, a freshman at Michigan State University, had taken my reserved dorm room the previous fall when I'd opted to keep my summer job until Christmas. I'd met him a month or so after he'd taken the room, and knew he had a reputation as a runner coming out of Reed City, but I'd never noticed his build until that spring day. As he walked toward the car in shorts, maybe for the first time that season, muscles bulged above his knees, rippling like caged animals frantic to break loose.

The freshman's name?

Herb Lindsay.

Years later I read a profile of him in a national sports magazine when he ranked as the world's top road racer. One passage described him as the fullback of distance runners because of his powerful physique. My memory of the freshman walking in shorts, diminutive and rail thin, muscles straining for the release of swift motion, belied the analogy to a football player.

I weighed maybe twice as much as he did in 1974.

One day about the time of the glimpse from the car, Lindsay and I sat at a table in a dorm cafeteria, just the two of us. He asked question after question about my weight, more consistent with a fullback than his. He meant no harm, I believe, he simply wanted to satisfy his curiosity about how it felt to carry so many pounds, but he might as well have called me "Fatso."

I told him I weighed 230 pounds, the most recent measure I could quantify - having an understandable aversion to scales - but I knew in my heart my struggle with depression had brought my body mass to a higher plateau, more in keeping with a lineman.

My guilt at the white lie prompted me to check. I tipped the scales at 252 pounds. The dose of reality prompted me to change my eating habits, and two years later I weighed 165 pounds, the initial passage to a plateau of balance.

I have Herb Lindsay to thank for the sequel ... well, actually, Lindsay and a chance encounter with a woman I hadn't seen in the year or so during which I'd gained many of the extra pounds.

Some 30 years have passed since I last saw Lindsay. When I knew him, I'd run in a few cross-country meets in high school, unmotivated, thinking of racing as a horrible chore for a mere mortal or as a fantasy land for fitness fanatics or for human greyhounds.

Five years would slip away before I found space in my life for jogging as a health kick. Another 19 years would slip away, years of tenuous residence on the plateau of balance, before I found space in my psyche for racing.

We all know the joke: "I ran with the Kenyans." Well, I've met the Kenyans in passing while warming up for a race. But I've never run in the same event with Lindsay. Because he helped to send me down a road that led to racing, though, I claim my exchange with him as the chief example of a topic I call Close Running Encounters of the First Kind ... the racing kind.

A Pint Down

A dog bit me at the Mt. Baldhead Challenge in Saugatuck.

Two days earlier, when a nurse inserted a needle under the skin of the inside crook of my left elbow and probed for a vein, I couldn't contain myself.

"I don't know if I should say anything, but that stings a little. Actually, that stings a lot."

"Yes, and it's getting puffy," she said.

Sure enough, a bulge had already developed above the crook. The jittery nurse called her superior, who confirmed a hematoma, telling the nurse she'd passed the needle straight through the vein, telling me I'd have a sore arm and a large black-and-blue patch for a few days. She gestured toward my right arm.

"Still want to give blood?"

I still didn't think about the upcoming race. "I'm game."

That was Thursday. Saturday, halting for the third time on landings along the 282 steps up the dune in the sixth mile of the 15K Challenge, I regretted my willingness to forgive. I regretted my spur-of-the-moment decision to drop by the blood drive.

As I clung to a rail as to a lifeline, gasping for oxygen, it seemed as if 200 runners crowded past me on the stairs, although, given my final place, it couldn't have been more than 40. Imagine my chagrin at having to admit to my friends the next week the reason for my laggard time. The ugly evidence of the bruise in the crook of my left elbow elicited no sympathy. Imagine the teasing I endured.

"Next time, remember, give blood after the race, not before. A-F-T-E-R, not B-E-F-O-R-E."

Well, I'm slow, but I figured it out about the time I clung to the lifeline of the rail. Nevertheless I joined the ribbing to get them off my back. My time in the Challenge, one hour 10 minutes and 10 seconds, three minutes off my clocking of the previous year, left a goofy impression on my tongue.

"One ten ten. You know, it sounds like Rin Tin Tin."

The dog that bit me.

Jumping-Off Place

"Stay to the side of the road!"

The voice sounded gruff and disgusted, maybe because of its hurried delivery. It issued from a cop car just coming abreast of me in the back half of the Fruitport Old Fashioned Days 10K. As the cruiser sped ahead to a water station at the next corner, where the cop got out, I angled from the road's centerline to the stony shoulder.

The cop tried to pace me as I turned the corner, apologizing, or at least explaining what he meant, instructing me to run on the road's edge rather than in the middle for safety's sake. Lacking enough breath to find my voice, I nodded understanding as he lost ground.

He looked as if he spent more time at the donut shop than at the gym.

Almost as deep in oxygen debt as at the Mt. Baldhead Challenge, I made a poor showing at Fruitport. The road at one point along the course dipped to a short bridge beside a little bay. A sardonic feeling came over me from a sign in front of the water.

"No jumping from bridge."

I feel bad, I thought, but not suicidal. And the air's too cool to need a swim to get my core temperature down. And with the donut man safely out of the race, there are no cops around to make me feel jumpy.

Pals on Ice

A frog slimed me in Grand Rapids.

Knowing the hosts, I expected the Frogger to prove quirky. If it had proved conventional, I would have sued for a refund of my entry fee and disavowed any knowledge of the hosts. The race, now defunct, could have given the word quirky a dictionary entry, as in, "The quirky Frogger attracts quirky folks."

Being one of a kind, it covered an odd distance, 5.5K, guaranteed to produce PRs for lots of runners each year. Herb Lindsay could have negotiated the course on crutches and recorded a PR. Being eclectic in layout, its unique course, a swampy jungle path debouching into suburban streets, guaranteed leafy slaps to runners' faces and subsequent giddyup slaps, self-administered except in the more-quirky cases, to runners' rumps.

Quirky morphed into bizarre in 2003. A late-winter storm skated in on the city's north side about start time for the Frogger. As if arctic snails had invaded the area, a freezing slime began to form on the streets, forcing runners to become ice skaters. A few slid entirely off course.

By the time the last stragglers came in from the weather for beery consolation, the first half-inch of an ultimate two inches of sleet obscured every outdoor surface, whether limbs of trees or of runners.

I shared with many others the cold comfort of posting a PR.

I shared with no one else, as far as I know, a disorienting flip-flop of the pecking order with a pal. In dozens of races in the previous five years I'd watched him bound ahead of me by 20 seconds or so in the opening meters of races and draw to the edge of my field of view as the kilometers passed.

As he preceded me along the swampy path in the Frogger, though, where the jungle precluded one runner from overtaking another, I felt an unfamiliar restraint from outside myself, an unfamiliar stifling of my energy, like an amphibian checked by an obstacle ahead in its desire to leap.

As he climbed from the jungle into the 'burbs, urging me on as I pulled past him into the streets, time and space lurched out of phase for me as my tiny corner of the running world turned inside-out. As he trailed me to the finish, I felt an internal weather as odd as the external weather.

Somebody kissed the Frogger and turned me into a prince.

Another running pal in my own age group imparted a similar lurch - or so I thought for a few minutes - at the Thanksgiving 5K at Calvin College. As I picked my way among patches of ice left on the campus circle drive by a freak snowstorm the previous night, trying to find a surface with traction, I glimpsed ahead a figure with a distinctive, signature forward slouch. I'd seen neither hide nor hair of the slouch's owner at registration, during warm-ups, or in the starting lineup. For years he's belonged to the pantheon of runners-faster-than-me-at-any- distance.

As I passed him a quarter-mile into the race, he replied to my greeting with a comment I interpreted as an admonishment, doubtless with our age-group competitors in mind.

"Couple of guys up ahead."

My puzzlement at having beaten him to the finish line cleared up with the posting of results.

No sign of his name.

Bandit.

No Respect for Elders Less than a half-mile into the first circuit of the campus circle drive, seconds after I'd pulled ahead of the bandit, a young woman with a girlish figure fell in step with me on my right. She essayed minute surges every few strides. I replied. It felt like an amiable game of wills.

Then, after maybe a quarter-mile, as if dismissing the old guy for small game or deciding to get clear to choose an unimpeded track among ice patches, she darted ahead, merging left to run in my path.

I put her out of my mind as in another league. Soon, my perceptible world shrinking to my immediate surroundings, as it often does for periods during races, I lost sight of her altogether.

But in the second circuit of the circle, nearing the end of the race, I saw she'd attached herself to the heels of a couple young guys about 30 seconds ahead of me.

Pesky kid. How dare she play games, however amiable, with the self- esteem of a decrepit old man?

Her series of surges reminded me of a passage at about two kilometers out of five in the inaugural running of the Town Crier in Saugatuck.

A teenage boy appeared on my left. Often teenagers die after jackrabbit starts, and though he came up from behind, I speculated that he'd overtaxed himself early in the race. His breathing supported the speculation.

We made a turn; I lengthened my stride to edge ahead; he answered, I thought, with difficulty. We went into a hollow; he leaned into the downhill to edge ahead; I answered despite my dislike of descents. We made another turn and climbed out of the hollow; without even digging very deeply, I edged ahead on the uphill; he answered.

We came out on high ground and he swooped forward and disappeared over a ridge so fast it took my breath away.

Pesky kid. Just see if he still wears the wings of Mercury on his feet when he's my age.

The Juggler

Should old acquaintance be forgot? It's at least as likely to happen in the heat of a race as in the cool of everyday life.

And never brought to mind? Runners seldom totally lose touch with one another the way the best buddies of youth do.

Once a gun startles them into a froggy leap, old pals become friendly rivals on a racecourse. It's every man and woman for himself or herself at a panic pace until they stand together afterwards and compare notes in the blush of mutual encouragement. They've drawn no blood and they're fine with each other in the end.

But a few strangers prefer to submerge in the murk under the green pond scum rather than to bask in the warm sun on the lily pads. Among the few who go for the jugular, even on the recreational trail, racing's a snake-drag-frog-down-to-the-icy-depths activity.

Long ago in the April Fools' 10K in Allegan - a small event, now departed without leaving a tombstone in the graveyard of racing history - during a shallow climb in the second mile, I overtook a young woman from Three Rivers among a knot of runners. A second woman came up to match pace with me for a while just before a turn at about the halfway mark.

"Where's the girl?"

Because her tone had a sound of fright, and because the word "girl" made me think of a woman worried about a daughter or other young companion for whom she's responsible, I sought an immature figure when I looked back. I saw only adults.

"Can you see her?"

Her tone had a sound of panic. The only female in sight was the woman from Three Rivers. Then I got it. The woman at my side had taken the gender lead in the field. I told her she'd opened up a gap of about 100 yards between herself and the girl.

"I gotta shake her."

Like a snake honed in on a frog, she struck out around the turn, outracing the girl to a gender title.

A bit of the snake in me coils for the strike if I find myself behind runners I feel I ought to outpace. My PR for the 10K came at Laingsburg when I set a breakneck tempo to track down - as a snake hones in on the infrared of a heat source such as a rabbit - a runner or two I recognized from elsewhere, only to have the rabbits peel off at the finish of the 5K.

I set my PR for the 5K at the River Bank Run when I started near the front with the fast folk, having learned a lesson the previous year by clocking a poor time when I arrived late, got caught in the middle of the pack, and had to follow a zigzag path in chasing down about 1,000 slower runners.

My best race ever, I believe, came in the Wayland Roadrunners, a seven-mile handicapper in which slower runners start in advance, the slower the earlier, based on average times in previous races, an annual temptation to me in my serpent-like resolve to pick people off.

The Joshers

The seven-mile handicapper, which I've run seven times, holds a special place in my heart. It's the only race in which I've ever crossed the finish line first.

I don't aspire to such a thing as to finish first. But one year I'd been nursing along a nephew whose interest in running lasted about a month. Thus I'd posted a poor average time in Roadrunners' races leading up to the seven-miler, and when my nephew ran out of gas forever in the second mile, I took off at my own pace, thus waltzing home far in advance of everyone else.

The fast folk were at the two-mile mark when I met them at the five-mile mark on my return. One of them hailed me with laurels.

"We have a winner."

My pals teased me about taking a flier. But nobody really minded my lucky score. People at Roadrunners, taking their cue from the series organizer, an unabashed popularizer of running, place a lot of stock in camaraderie and the commonweal, and little in point standings.

When I showed up at Roadrunners for my first races after a ruptured appendix, nobody dwelled on my lagging pace, instead rooting for me to get back to where I'd started, praising me when I got even better. When I rolled over an ankle on a turn in the annual five-miler, nobody dwelled on my being smoked in the remaining mile by rival pals, instead sympathizing with my setback. When I ran a four-miler on a black-and- blue toe I'd stubbed in the morning, nobody dwelled on my fast time, instead ribbing me about the spraining of my good sense along with my digit.

Mutual support and respect run deep and fast even among most strangers on the recreational racing circuit. One year in the early miles of the Mt. Baldhead Challenge, while running at a tester of a tempo, I found myself in stride with a man of about my age. Spectators at street side and on porches called greetings and encouragement to him by name.

My curiosity about his popularity started a conversation between us. He said they knew him due to his business in the area; he printed for a living. I said I wrote for a living. He said he'd been an athlete in his youth, playing baseball in college, and had taken to running as a way of regaining a level of health. I said I'd been an athlete in high school, gotten out of shape in college, and had taken to running to compensate for idleness.

We chatted until we started up the 282 steps; we chatted after we came down off the back side of the dune known as Mt. Baldy. By the time we hit the rolling trails in the campground beyond the six-mile mark, the tester of a pace, not to mention the climb and descent, had taken its toll on me. I urged him to abandon a lagging fellow runner.

"Go on ahead. I'm backing down a little."

Beating me to the finish line by some 40 seconds, he bumped me from second to third in my age group. We congratulated each other in all sincerity. We acted as civilized recreational runners always act in the aftermath of a race.

He never told me whether he ever met in college any baseball players who later became famous, so I never told him Herb Lindsay once did me a favor. MR