Everywhere we look we see Americans running. They run for every reason anybody could think of. They run for health, for beauty, to lose weight, to feel fit and because it is the thing they love to do.
Every year, for example, thousands upon thousands of people run in one race, the Boston Marathon, the best known long distance race in the United States. In recent years, there have been nearly 5,000 official competitors and it takes three whole minutes for the crowd of runners just to cross the starting line. You may have heard the story of the Greek runner Pheidippides. He ran from Marathon to Athens to deliver the news of the great victory 2,500 years ago. No one knows how long it took him to run the distance. But the story tells us that he dies of the effort.
Today on one will die in a Marathon race. But the effort is still enormous. Someone does come in first in this tiring foot race. But at the finish line we see what this race is about: not being first but finishing. The real victory is not over one’s fellow runners but over one’s own body. It is a victory of will-power over fatigue. In the Boston Marathon each person who crosses that finish line is a winner.