The Bus

Sandra looked back. This was the tenth time she’d glanced over her shoulder during the last mile. She tried to will the bus to slow down. 

A quarter mile behind her, it was still just a yellow blur, but it crept closer every time Sandra checked.

Her watch beeped and she began to run. Well, she called it running anyway. It was more like a slow trot or, for those a bit more cruel, a fast walk. Sandra didn’t care what other runners thought. She just had to keep pushing forward.

She started breathing harder. To her and anyone else watching, it didn’t seem like she was faster, but this was a sign that she was picking up her pace. 

Sandra looked around and tried to take it all in. The crowds of people who had once lined the sidewalks and police barriers were now mostly gone. Discarded paper cups, crushed from thousands of runners trampling over them, lay scattered across the street. A lone volunteer swept them up with a rake ahead of her. 

She was in the Bronx, near the most northern point of the marathon. This felt like a turning point, like when they started heading south, it would be all downhill. But Sandra knew this was a lie. The biggest hills in the New York City marathon were at the end.

She passed a banner that read, “Mile 20.” Just over six miles to go. Sandra got a surge of adrenaline - she could do this, she had to.

She looked back again. To her dismay, despite running as fast as she could, the bus had gained on her. So close that she could read the black letters on the front. She watched as it slowed. The red stop sign swung out as the door opened and a runner stepped on.

“We’re not going to make it,” a man beside her said. He was tall with wispy gray hairs that sprang out over his head in patches. “Have you ever DNF’d?” he asked.

DNF - did not finish. Sandra shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “But I’ve DFL’d plenty of times. Might pull that trick off today.”

The gray-haired man, Jack, laughed. “Easy to be dead f-ing last in a small race. Be something if you did it today,” he said. “I think that bus will gobble us up in another mile or two.”

Sandra’s watch beeped, and she slowed to a walk. Jack stopped running to stay with her.

“Do you think if the bus fills up, it’ll have to turn around?” he asked. “Maybe by the time it gets to us, there won’t be any room, and they’ll have to let us keep running.”

“I’m not going to find out,” Sandra said.

There were about a dozen runners between Sandra and the bus. She looked ahead and counted another dozen in front of her. The bus was supposed to be moving at four miles per hour. That would get them to the finish precisely at the marathon cut-off, six and a half hours after it started. 

But Sandra thought it was moving faster. Maybe the driver wanted to go home early. Maybe he was being pressured by the race organizers. She had planned her pace perfectly, giving herself a five-second-per-mile buffer to beat the cut-off. The bus was too close at this point in the marathon.

Sandra started to run again. Her watch hadn’t beeped. She was still supposed to be on her walking segment. That’s how she ran. Run for thirty seconds, walk for thirty seconds. Rinse, repeat. It’s how she started running and how she finished twenty other marathons. Granted, those didn’t have time cut-offs. And she’d been DFL at several and close to DFL in the others. 

She didn’t care. She loved to run. It made those two-hour work meetings more tolerable. Her doctor noted that her blood pressure had dropped. He said he might take her off the medication soon. She even had to buy a new wardrobe now that her old clothes no longer fit. And her blood no longer boiled when she thought about her ex.

That’s why she started running in the first place. Her ex was constantly nagging her about spending too much time on her phone, eating too much, her online shopping, or whatever was irritating him at that moment. Meanwhile, he sat on the couch, watched adult men throw balls at each other on TV, and drank beer after beer from the stupid cooler he kept at his feet.

He could have his beer and TV. Sandra found her place on the road. Rain, snow, wind, whatever, she ran almost every day of the week. And she didn’t start because of her stupid boyfriend. She started when her doctor gave her a wake-up call and said that while she was only forty-two, she had aged worse than a greasy cheeseburger. Well, not exactly in those words. But now he was thinking about taking her off the blood pressure medication. Ha!

So, no, Sandra was not getting on that bus. She gritted her teeth and started to push ahead of Jack. For a few minutes, he tried to keep up. Then, he had to stop and walk, falling further back.

Not long after the “Mile 22” banner, Sandra encountered the first of the 5th Avenue hills. It wasn’t much of a hill. Just a slight incline. She wouldn't have noticed if she hadn’t run twenty-two miles already. But it forced her to walk, and even then she began taking long, deep breaths.

Sandra risked a peek behind her. For a little while, she hadn’t seen the bus. The course turned left, then right, navigating around several blocks, hiding the bus from view. But now that she was on a long straightway, it was less than two hundred yards behind her. She saw Jack about halfway between her and the bus. He saw her and began pumping his arms, trying to catch up.

There were more spectators now, randomly scattered along the street. Some whooped and clapped as Sandra passed, but she didn’t hear them. She was focused on a spot under her left arm near her back. Her tank top rubbed there and stung.

Sandra wanted to scream. She clenched her fists and held out her elbows, trying to stop the chafing. It didn’t work. 

Then, salvation in the form of a volunteer holding one of the most disgusting things she’d ever seen: a popsicle stick with a giant gob of vaseline. Sandra grabbed it, thanked the volunteer, and smeared the goop under her arm. For the moment, anyway, her arm felt better.

Still, the bus crept closer. At mile twenty-three, Sandra grabbed a cup of water from the aid station. It was warm from sitting on the table for so long. Sandra didn’t care. She fished out some energy chews from her waistpack and popped them in her mouth. That gave her a brief surge.

It didn’t last. Five minutes later, she had to stop. Her hip screamed. It was like someone had jabbed a knife into her side. She did a couple of quick stretches to try to loosen it up. 

A spectator stood just on the other side of the police barrier. “Don’t stop,” she yelled. “You can do it! Keep going!”

Sandra started running again. This time in the middle of the street, hoping this section along the yellow line wouldn’t irritate her hip.

She made a deal with herself. Once she turned into Central Park, she would stop running. If the bus caught her, so be it. It didn’t matter that she’d had to travel here, pay for a flight, stay in an expensive hotel. She no longer cared about the finisher’s medal or the money she’d spent just to enter the stupid race. She was done.

When she glanced back, the bus was only a hundred yards behind her. She watched as it stopped and the doors opened. Jack got on. He waved and said, “See you soon!”

There was no one else between Sandra and the bus. They both moved forward. A fifteen-minute-per-mile pace. Four miles per hour. Basically, a fast walk. For Sandra, it felt like a dead sprint.

At mile twenty-four, she entered Central Park. Fifty yards behind, the bus followed her in. Sandra hung her head. This was it. Not long until she was sitting on the bus.

Her watch beeped. She’d lost track of whether she was supposed to run or walk. It didn’t matter at this point. But the course did something funny. It began to go downhill. Sandra’s legs sped up, turning over a little faster. For the first time in the race, she thought she was gaining some distance on the bus.

Even when the hill ended, and the course flattened out, Sandra kept running. Her watch beeped, but she didn’t stop. The knife wedged deeper into her hip. “Stop hurting,” she shouted. She slapped her hip for good measure and kept going.

The bus rumbled up behind her at mile twenty-five. The engine revved and slowed as the driver tried to maintain an even four miles per hour. It was only thirty yards behind her. But Sandra pressed on. No course officials were telling her to stop. There were more spectators now, and they were cheering her on.

Up ahead, she could see the mile twenty-six banner. The bus was now only twenty feet behind her. She could hear the brakes squeal. A breeze kicked up, pushing diesel fumes around her. It made Sandra’s stomach turn.

She tried to run faster. But no matter how much she told her brain to run, her body refused to cooperate. Her legs felt like lead. She was breathing so hard she was happy no one was running with her. She couldn’t have talked if she wanted to.

The brakes sighed as the bus lurched to a stop. Sandra realized the driver had to stop. Otherwise, he would run her over. The door opened. The stop sign swung out like a command she had to obey. 

Sandra looked back at the driver. He frowned but made no signal for her to get on. She kept running.

She made a final turn at Columbus Circle and could finally see the finish. The announcer’s voice echoed through the trees. There was a large crowd. They saw her, and the cheering grew louder. Cowbells rang. She was enveloped in a wave of noise. 

It didn’t feel like Sandra was moving. Her legs felt detached from her body. But she knew she was because the finish line was getting closer.

She took one final look back and smiled. The bus hadn’t made the turn. It was gone. 

She surged ahead, running as fast as she could.