His seamless sphere of his reverie was occasionally marred by some missing link in a Chevrolet who would yell: “Hey Runner, Runner!” Cassidy would flip a finger reflexively and otherwise indicate his considerable displeasure by some base epithet. For years he had tried to ignore them to no effect. Now his policy was to lash back. They were surprised when the runner (a gentle creature, no?) would exhibit such aggressiveness. What it was in human nature that generated this irresistible urge to bait the runner, he did not know. But he knew by now that it was deep, formidable, and nearly universal. An English writer of a different era recorded the taunts of street urchins: “Hey, looke at the runner, ee’s got nae clothes on!” At Cassidy some would yell “hut, two, three, four…” and laugh at their own preposterous wit, in some cretinous confusion unable to disassociate running from the military experience.

      Cassidy resented the ignorance of their intrusion. And, too, he had things thrown at him. Too many people seemed to think the runner would have no spunk (after all, running itself is the act of a coward, is it not?), thus he found automatic belligerence a healthy and effective response: they shut their sorry yaps up in an almost hurt shock. Once, by sprinting nearly 200 yards, he caught up to a particularly obnoxious carload of rowdies who, panic-stricken now, were halted at an uncooperative red light. Thinking themselves safe, after rolling up the windows and locking the doors, they watched in horror as Cassidy ran up the trunk and over the top of the car without breaking stride.

      In training he was fearless, felt himself too easily capable of violence. He often contemplated what he would do if someone stopped and challenged him. He figured he would put them through a little of what his life was all about first; taunt them into giving chase. He would stay just a little out of their grasp, egg them on and on. Perhaps, they would make half a mile or so, depending on how well he could lead them on, perhaps their own sense of pride might surface, a byproduct of a terrible misconception about what was actually happening. Shorter had once ran the legs off an entire gang of hooligans in the hills oh New Mexico, despite already being tired from a 15-mile run. You would watch for the signs, Cassidy thought, the ones you know so very well; the pain, the bewilderment, the blankness that would eventually come close to despair. He would make it a challenge, so they would forget their original purpose and keep on going just to show this bastard, this…this…(then it would dawn) runner.

      Then he would simply turn and face them. He would take on anyone like that, he thought. He would take on Muhammad Ali, so as long as he could direct the preliminaries.

      Cassidy knew very well that he could take men, otherwise strong and brave men, to place they have never been before. Places where life and death overlapped in surreal valleys of muscle gloom and heart despair, where one begins to realize once more that nothing really matters at all and that stopping (death?) is all; where all men can finally get the slick skin of civilization off and see that soft pink glow inside that tells you-in both cunnilingus and bullet wounds—that there are no secrets.

      A visitors taste, in short, of the distance runner’s daily fare. He would fight them then, if they still wanted to, after they knew. But they wouldn’t want to, he was sure of that. They would walk away with nothing more than hard-earned understanding.

      But, this night no one stopped. No one gave form to verbal menace. No one did any more than add his simple-minded bleating to the dark background of the runner’s ritual.

      Cassidy flew through the night.

Once A Runner by John L. Parker, Jr.

The young man could see dim figures on the track even in this pale light, slowly pounding round and round on the most infinite of footpaths.
But mostly it looked the same as it did four years ago, the same as a four hundred and forty yard oval probably will always look to one who knows a quarter of a mile by the inches.
But in his own mind time reposed in peculiar receptacles; to him the passing of one minute took on all manner of rare meaning. A minute was one fourth of a four-minute mile, a coffee spoon of his days and ways.
He did not much like this early-morning business, but the idea of foregoing the ritual, even for one morning, never crossed his mind.
They in fact respected these distant cousins of the spirit, who, among all people, had some modicum of insight into their own days and ways. But the runners resembled them only in the sense that a puma resembles a pussy cat. It is the difference between stretching lazily on the carpet and prowling the jungle for fresh red meat.
The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many days, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials.

"Cassidy sought no euphoric interludes. They came, when they did, quite naturally and he was content to enjoy them privately. He ran not for crypto-religious reasons, but to win races, to cover ground fast. Not only to be better than his fellows, but better than himself. To be faster by a tenth of a second, by an inch, by two feet or two yards than he had been the week or year before. He sought to conquer the physical limitations placed upon him by a three dimensional world (and if Time is the fourth dimension, that too was his province). If he could conquer the weakness, the cowardice in himself, he would not worry about the rest; it would come. "