Original Bill Rodgers Running Center -
Cleveland Circle

With the great herd of college students having long since migrated – and the remainder of native Boston either down on the Cape, or up hugging some warm New Hampshire shore line – it was on weekends that the city sank deepest into its long summer torpor.  Out in Cleveland Circle only the MBTA Green Line cut through the sludge of the afternoon hours, its trains pulling vacantly into their yard with the screech of forged wheels over curved rails, there to await their next run east down Beacon into town.

Across the way at the small running shop on Chestnut Hill Avenue the end of another weary week of retail neared as the clock over the cash register tugged toward five o’clock.  Odd thing about time, we view it in the regularity of second hand sweeps and liquid-crystal progressions, yet it moves with anything but a steady measure.  At times like this it seems caught in molasses aging us in almost double time.

Folded on the stairs between the store’s two levels sat the assistant manager, Jason Kehoe, his elbows propped on his knees, his hands cupping his long, bearded face which was framed by a mane of lank, sandy hair. All that was before him was a scant customer or two still meandering the sales floor picking through oddly placed cardboard boxes and cluttered display racks.

“It’s brutal being polite to people all day,” Jason sighed sardonically as a friend headed to the locker room in back to change for their weekly Saturday run.  “In fact,” he concluded, “it’s not healthy.  You’re not being honest.”

Though Jason carried his alienation like a badge of honor in any regard, with each turn of the clock his psyche continued to sag, until like descent into Dante’s imagination he had transformed from a public servant into a private avenger in need of a cleansing purge.  This was the price of retail, the slow captured grind.

At long last the closing hour came and went, the final customers ushered out.  With heads low, but spirits rising, the crew filed out back behind the stockroom into their small, two-stall shower room.  There they changed into their running gear before meeting out front to stretch anxious muscles in preparation for their weekly run to oblivion and back.

&*****

The Rez

Sitting just west of Cleveland Circle  the Chestnut Hill Reservoir lay in placid repose beneath the late afternoon sun.  There it formed a natural break between the city’s hard surface and the leafy Boston College campus. And situated as it was, it had long been one of the area’s most popular running destinations. Along the rim of its southern shore it featured two grand waterworks’ buildings posing as art museums in their stately elegance.

Many of the Saturday afternoon regulars would loop that one and three-quarter miles as part of their daily routine.  But on these late Saturday afternoons it was no more than a link in a much longer span, as this was more than just another training run.  For most it took on the importance once reserved for religious observation, a service-at-speed to reawaken a deeply felt connection to a more visceral set of truths than could be found between the covers of any hymnal or hard upon the pew fronting any altar.

Their first few miles out Beacon were for bringing systems to speed, monitoring past stresses, and initiating a rhythm.  Minor key exchanges accompanied those minutes, nothing serious or threatening, certainly nothing to point to the coming savagery.  That it would come was enough.  To speak of it was to corrupt it, like ballplayers discussing an impending no-hitter.  And so in the beginning, in the pregnancy of effort, with many heated miles before them shimmering in the distance, the pack remained little more than a moving meritocracy, poignant potentials of past strengths and weaknesses, each a willing celebrant to the ritual’s paced liturgy ahead. Continue reading →