A Farewell to Legs

A Hemingway fiction in our time, author Scott Fivelson takes the reader on a Papa-esque journey from Paris to Pamplona as a marathoner on his last legs reflects on the sport as it might have been written about if Hemingway had been a runner. Excerpt: The man wore khaki running shorts and a khaki tank top with the number 38 and the words, TRANS-AFRICA MARATHON. He was lying face down in the long wide place with the big trees on both sides. Is this, he thought, where the great jogging...
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A Hemingway fiction in our time, author Scott Fivelson takes the reader on a Papa-esque journey from Paris to Pamplona as a marathoner on his last legs reflects on the sport as it might have been written about if Hemingway had been a runner. Excerpt: The man wore khaki running shorts and a khaki tank top with the number 38 and the words, TRANS-AFRICA MARATHON. He was lying face down in the long wide place with the big trees on both sides. Is this, he thought, where the great jogging elephants go on their great jogs? He knew in his head he was not where those who were running the race had run because, wherever those who ran ran, there were always the places they had stepped and the places they had not and the places they had stepped always looked like shoeprints to you until the year the Englishman came with his smug smugness and said they looked rather like your frozen waffles. Englishmen spoiled everything. But it didn't matter now, there were no traces of the ones who ran the long run and wore the poly-cotton. He was worse than lost; he was truly lost. He lay there, one of the lost generation.