Runner's World

My dad starting running when he turned forty. He'd always been fit and had played squash (I used to collect his leftover squash-balls) and cricket (once). I'm not sure what prompted him to start running. Maybe age? I think forty is a good age to start something that you have not done before. My dad also started playing piano a few years ago, when he was fifty-two. With the piano, he had always wanted to learn and take lessons and become a grand-pianist, it had just taken him thirty-something years to do so. Perhaps the same was for running (I should ask him).
And so my dad became a runner. There are lots and lots of runners in South Africa. It is a beautiful place to run in. My dad used to run in the shadows of a towering Table Mountain. He was late for every appointment but punctual for every date with the tarmac. I remember my mom and dad's fortieth birthday party very clearly, although I was only five years old. I helped our friends Debbie and Robert with the catering preparations  They even let me grate the cheese. My parents seemed very old (but now I am halfway to this point already).
I remember watching my dad in races. It was marvelous and exciting and wonderful. I think my favourite in South Africa was The Two Ocean's, an ultra-marathon (fifty-six kilometres) that stretched through Cape Town and finished kind of near our house, near the Kirstenbosch Gardens. We used to wait in the fork of the road with our friends and my mom would cheer embarrassingly loudly for all the runners, even if we didn't know them. She would say: "good work, keep going, you're nearly there!" which was true, because we were probably only five kilometres from the finish. I think the runners appreciated our cheering. We used to wait by the spot where the mountain looked like teddy bear ears. One time we waited and waited and my mom went to a portaloo and my dad ran past while she was in it (but my sister and I cheered on her behalf).
It was always exciting waiting for my dad to pass, peering at the never-ending flow of runners trudging towards us. He was part of a running club called Varsity Old Boys and he wore a singlet with blue and white stripes. Sometimes, there would be false alarms, when his friends would approach in their own sweat-infused singlets and our excitement would mount. But then he would arrive, cresting the corner, with his hair tufty and sweaty and we would wave and shout and clap and cheer and he would wave at us and I would be so proud  of him. We would often go to the finish line and watch him finish, sprint like a crazy-man towards the line and we would all hug him even though he smelt like salt and tired. He'd take off his shoes and hobble because he'd probably just run forty-two kilometres and was tired.
My dad is tough you know. He tallies up all the kilometres he's ever run, and he's covered over thirty-thousand kilometres. (That is a lot). He has even done the Comrades, an ultra marathon that is eight-six or ninety-two kilometres depending on the year. I think it is exclusively reserved for crazy tough beautiful people.
I sometimes worry about his running. I am worried that he might hurt himself. He is very stubborn and sometimes, if he trips, he just keeps on running and does not even cry as I might.
The bomb at the end of the Boston marathon made me very very sad (and a lot of people very very sad too). This is because I have waited for my dad at the end of so many marathons and I know how exciting it is and there are so many positive feelings of happy in the air. There are so many emotions on the faces of the amazing people crossing the line and the people cheering and crying and clapping and waving. Ends of races are about joy and achievement and journey and family. I find it so horrible and beyond any any understanding that someone might want to hurt people at the end of a marathon. It doesn't make any sense to me, it makes me kind of sad for the world, or for the people who do such senseless things.
But I know that in spite of this cruel-crazy, people will keep running and running because it is invigorating and freeing and it makes people feel joy. And I know my dad will keep running too, in that same tatty singlet, with those same sports sunglasses and I will feel that same tingly happy-proud feeling in my tummy when my mom and my sisters and I see him spring across the finish line