Running High on Crystal Lake

For a few miles I felt the runner's high, then I celebrated by getting high in a sand cave.

“Fuck you, I’ll get up at six!” I slurred.

“Holy shit,” I thought to myself. “What are you doing!? You’ve been drinking beer and playing Euchre for five hours! What is wrong with you!?”

It was the summer of 2003. I was twenty-one, back home in Michigan after my sophomore year at the University of New Hampshire, and in the full throes of a righteous ritual: using cards and copious beer to ease the pain of a day spent house-painting beneath a baking sun. Despite that, I’d committed to running one leg of our team marathon, scheduled for a few weeks later. Running, suffering a stroke or dying in a ditch: whichever.

“So when was the last time you, like, exercised?” asked my friend Eric, late at night before a planned practice run.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” I turned to one of my other, more athletic friends. “Chris, are you running tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’m getting up at six. But I don’t think you want to do that.”

The fucking nerve.

Now, when I say “team marathon,” I’m not talking about so…