The man who trained for and ran a 3:09 marathon in 2011 is gone; there are some days when I glance at a shop window as I run by and see someone who looks like that guy, but if I stop to make sure, he vanishes, because I am standing still, and he never was. The loss has not been so much ability but focus and desire; now, far more than otherwise, when the urge to stop comes upon me, I give in. So I am a middle-aged man, born in 1965, and I am a runner, born
