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anti-inflammatories like they were candy love hearts, going through a handful of Naproxen every day.
    Even the dangerous cortisone injections in those big needles, the ones they fire right into that band of tough connective tissue at the bottom of your foot, I’ve had those. They say you’re only supposed to take three of those in your whole life – that’s all a regular person can handle – but the year before the trials, I got six in five months. I just kept going to different doctors, in different crowded clinics, guys who didn’t know where I’d been two weeks earlier. It was the same thing every time. They’d go through their whole spiel again, and I’d pretend to pay close attention as they explained it all out.
    â€œYou can only get three of these,” they’d say, “just three, you understand?”
    I’d look and nod my head seriously and sometimes I’d even write the number down for them, a big loopy three on one of their little pads and I’d underline it. Then I’d hop right up onto their tissue covered table, rip off my sock, stick out my fucked-up foot, and brace myself for number 4 or number 5 or whatever came next.
    It always got bad before the biggest competitions – like this one, or before the Olympic trials or if there was a big trip to China on the line or carding money. You’d get stuck with this feeling like when you’re blowing up a balloon and you know you’re almost at the limit and you’re not sure if you should give it that little extra puff because there might still be room for a last bit of air, or it all might just explode in your face.
    BURNER AND I started our warm-up jog about an hour before the race was scheduled to go. It took me a while to get started and for those first few minutes, I hobbled along doing the old-man shuffle until my body came back to me and my Achilles remembered what it was supposed to do. Burner was smooth right from the beginning. While I jerked up and down, fighting against the parts of myself that didn’t want to do this anymore, he kind of hovered beside me flat and easy. We were like two people at the airport. He floated and seemed to move along without any effort – like one of those well-pressed, put-together guys who zooms past on the moving sidewalk – and I was like the slob with too many carry-on bags, huffing and puffing and dropping things, hauling all this extra stuff and just hoping to find the right gate. Even my breathing was heavier than it should have been.
    We made a big loop out and around the stadium, winding our way up and down the quiet little side streets, past houses full of people who couldn’t care less about what was happening just down the road. Burner and I had probably run thousands of miles together, but I was pretty sure these would be the last ones. I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I decided it there, during that last little warm-up jog. I think all those houses where nobody cared kind of forced themselves into my head.
    â€œThis is going to be it for me,” I told him, after about fifteen minutes.
    â€œWhat do you mean ‘it’?”
    â€œThis is it. The last real ball-buster race for me. I think it’s over. Time to get on with everything else.”
    It was easier than I thought it would be. All you had to do was say it. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt better and calmer, but Burner didn’t take it the same way.
    â€œWhat?” he said and he looked at me with this kind of confused sneer.
    â€œCome on, Mikey. What else is there for you to do? You can’t be finished. You’ve got lots more in the tank. You can’t be one of those guys who gives it up and sits on the couch for a year eating chips and dip. You’ll never be the guy in the fun run, the guy with a walkman, the loser who wants to win his age-group. You can’t just turn it off like that.”
    I