The one thing she could do was run. Her mom said she was born running which wasn't true, but she did run before she could walk. She beat the boys she beat the girls, she broke her high school track records. At the district meet in her senior year a tall thin black girl beat her in the 2000. She threw up all over the finish and clawed great gashes in her face with her finger nails and screamed and shrieked all the way to the coach's car. The coach held her hands down and wrapped a blanket round her and tried to shut her up. She later sued him for sexual assault. She was a poor kid. Trailer trash, they called her.
``Its all I have - running is all I have,'' she said. And the coach she had sued unsuccessfully said ``It's not enough.''
She won a track scholarship to a junior college, but it didn't work out, because she didn't really know how to read. A volunteer tried to help her with her reading, but she couldn't keep her mind on it, and she kept telling the volunteer she should get in shape and lose that blubber which did not please the volunteer who was a fifty seven year old grandmother who had been, until then, quite happy with her appearance.
She got a job as a courier for a medical lab and she entered every 10K every marathon she could afford. She nearly always won. Other runners began to know her - knew to keep a wide berth from those sharp elbows and even her feet in the cheap running shoes. She had a way of stepping on other people without breaking her stride. They caught her drinking beer on a pee break during one marathon. She was disqualified but she kept on running anyway.
She qualified for the World's Best Marathon, bought her ticket and arrived in New Zealand with a plastic market bag her only luggage. People were nice to her. The night before the marathon she went to a Karaoke bar and sang until early morning. She was terrible and did not know the words and people jeered and someone threw a wadded paper napkin at her and she went to the table and decked a young man who in fact had not thrown the napkin. They spent the rest of the night in her hotel room smoking, laughing, making love.
She ran as well as ever next day, but something wasn't right. She found herself hemmed in. She could not get clear. Always there was someone in front of her. Elbows seemed to be jabbing at her. People too close. Then somehow she fell. She was up in a second but then she was down again - the same man with a pony tail beside her. She was bleeding now, but she went on running and she did not stop though products of conception were collecting in her shorts and blood was running down her legs into her running shoes. She came in third in her class with a cracked leg bone and a lost baby.
``I don't know who you are that tripped me,'' she said to the TV camera, ``but you wont stop me running!''
Nothing did.