Distance-Running, you may know, can be of very hard work that brings very good luck.

My time-span with the sport extends from 1979 to 2005. That first year, I qualified  for the U.S. Men's Olympic Marathon Trial
after four months of training. The last year, both my team, the Excelsior Running Club of San Francisco, and I won our Age-Group in the USATF National Road 10-K Championships.

Moments of revelation and wonder came throughout that span of a quarter-century-or-so. Distance-running offers, you may know, too, encounters with what we may call the godly. Highs and lows arrive through competing with yourself and with others. John Coffey writes below in his 1999 piece for UltraRunning: 'The story of Don Paul is ... about crushing failures and phenomenal breakthroughs.'

What I can offer in return for the gifts Distance-Running has brought me are appreciations,  evocations and some perhaps useful tips about red-lining and other cruxes of training.  The uplifting moments and friendships delivered to me thought Distance-Running and Track & Field are literally numberless. 112 friends from the sport are listed below. 100s more are actual. Likewise the moments of exhilarated-unto-transcendent feeling and of absurd mistakes and predicaments are numberless.

Please see some writing from years ago that remembers friends. They're over on my 'Stands the Human Being' Substack. Bill Rodgers and Fred Lebow 

Views from and on Mount Tamalpais (above)--those sudden sights accompanied by nostrils-lifting smells--exhilaration and communion with "the Mountain"--composed, oh, 20 years + of wonders. Laps around the Reservoir in middle Central Park, Manhattan,  where I'd tied pennants of orange plastic at 100-pace intervals to mark "the splits" I wanted to "hit" in uptempo work-outs, were another form of digging into revelations. An early-morning hangover-clearer with Bill Rodgers on the mind-bending walkway of black-and-white stone swirls that borders Beaches of Leme, Copacabana, and Ipanema after that first night with Hortencia. Climbing to the turn-around height on Mount Ashland with Ric Sayre and then pounding down that dirt road to the welcome fountains of Siskiyou Park. Striding in sweatpants with Adkins Chun along the Embarcadero as we caught the 
aroma of Folgers Coffee roasting past the Ferry Building. Struggling to keep pace with John Campbell on trails of Golden Gate Park, roads by the River through Flint, Michigan,  and Bridges hazarded by hungover, unpredictably wayward, bowler-wearing pedestrians. Sharing satisfaction with Steve Spence when his long, hard, careful training and big efforts won in Columbus, Ohio.
The splendid, native hospitality of Jimmy and Maureen Nicholson in "the Sunset" of San Francisco and same with Kathy and Leo of the College Point Track Club of Queens,  New York and the same with Leighton and Raoul Couvilloun of Lafayete, Louisiana.

Moments literally beyond counting. Moments "there" forever. Moments of competing and camaraderie, of revelations and wonder, every distance-runner knows.