Eleven River Bank Runs is nothing. I know guys who have finished all 27, with stories and scars to prove it.

They remember running against Greg Meyer, Joan Benoit, Bill Rodgers, Roger Bannister and Phidippedes. It's amazing the memories that pounding pavement that long can bring.

Midway through this year's 25K race, it sure didn't feel like nothing. I felt like Bannister, who collapsed on the track 50 years and two days earlier after running the first sub-four-minute mile in history. Like Phidippedes, who ran from the battle plain of Marathon to Athens, announced the Greek army had beaten the Persians by proclaiming, "Rejoice, we conquer," collapsed and died.

My demise would not be as heroic. After I crumpled near John Ball Zoo, stragglers in the 4,458-runner field would trample me into roadkill. When some zoo worker found my bib number pinned to what others thought was a speed bump, he might orate, "Alas, poor Sullivan ..." before crew mates would cry, "Throw that thing in the dump! Come on!"

Nothing you dream seems to happen - which may be why more and more otherwise-sane people tackle the River Bank Run each year. Sit on your duff and life happens to you. Make goals and be active, you shake your world loose.

The race takes its name from the river it runs alongside, the Grand, but the river of energy - from elites vying for fame and fortune, to souls out to prove no misfortune can beat them, a stream of which you are a drop - is grander.

Except when you feel you're about to drop.

There is no common sense - it is all uncommon. You pay to run yourself into exhaustion in one big circle. Runners start downtown and descend to the flattest part of the course, named Indian Mounds Drive, where you never see mounds or Indians.

Around seven miles, when it starts to hurt and you still have the wits left to quit, crowds at Johnson Park cheer and encourage you to keep going. "I can do this," you think. Then the hills come.

While you contest them, some guy running near you is sure to remind you, "The leaders are finishing now" - grounds for homicide, if you had energy to commit it. Instead you ask, "How many miles do we have left?"

"You don't want to know."

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I heard claps of thunder. Rain started pelting us. Lightning is a race director's nightmare. Water is not going to melt people crazy enough to run 25 kilometers, but someone gets zapped by a bolt and, boom, liability lawyers converge on race-sponsor Fifth Third Bank like buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio each spring.

No such lucky strike for me. So I had to finish. "Looking good!" lied spectators. "Almost there!"

At last, the home stretch: one of the great highs in all of sportsdom. Crowds six-deep lining Ottawa Avenue, cheers that echo off downtown buildings, finishing banners and clocks in sight ... except one last monkey wrench: the banners weren't getting nearer. The harder I ran, the further away they seemed.

I finally caught them, and no one said anything about putting the things on wheels. But I plan to investigate when I can walk again and think logically. (The latter would be a first for me.)

If 11 River Bank Runs is nothing, 27 is even less. What was it that this year's record 10,127 participants (4,458 in the USA Track & Field national-championship 25K, 3,418 in the 5K run, 803 in the 5K walk, and 1,358 in the junior races) accomplished, going so far to end where we started?

Maybe all this nothing is really something. My body feels torn up today, but is stronger for months of training. My soul says I set out to do something difficult, did it, made memories and shared an adventure with friends.

My mind, outvoted 2-to-1 for the 11th-straight year, says I've learned nothing.

Fine with me. MR