feel a little remorseful. They’re absolutely right. You can replace your breath any number of times,
but not your knees. These are the only knees I’ll ever have, so I’d better take good care of them.
As I said before, I’ve been fortunate as a runner not to have had any major injuries. And I’ve never
had to cancel a race or drop out because of illness. Several times in the past, my right knee has felt
strange (it’s always the right knee), but I’ve always been able to soothe it and keep it going. So my
knee should be okay now too, right? That’s what I’d like to think. But even in bed I still feel uneasy.
What’ll I do if after all this I can’t run in the race? Was there something wrong with my training
schedule? Maybe I didn’t stretch enough? (Maybe I really didn’t.) Or maybe in the half marathon I ran
too hard at the end? With all these thoughts running through my head I couldn’t sleep well. Outside
the wind was cold and noisy.
The next morning, after I woke up, washed my face, and drank a cup of coffee, I tried walking down
the stairs in our apartment building. I gingerly descended the stairs, holding on to the railing and
paying close attention to my right knee. The inner part of the right knee still felt strange. That’s the
spot where I could detect a hint of pain, though it wasn’t the startling, sharp pain of the day before. I
tried going up and down the stairs one more time, and this time I went down the four flights and back up
again at close to normal speed. I tried all sorts of ways of walking, testing my knee by twisting it at various
angles, and felt a little relieved.
This isn’t connected to running, but my daily life in Cambridge isn’t going that smoothly. The
building we’re living in is undergoing some major remodeling, and during the day all you hear is
drills and grinders. Every day is an endless procession of workmen passing by outside our fourth-story
window. The construction work starts at seven thirty in the morning, when it’s still a little dark
outside, and continues until three thirty. They made some mistake in the drainage work on the veranda
above us, and our apartment got totally wet from the rain leaking in. Rain even got our bed wet. We
mobilized every pot and pan we had, but still it wasn’t enough to catch all the water dripping down, so
we covered the floor with newspapers. And as if this weren’t enough, the boiler suddenly gave out, and
we had to do without hot water and heating. But that wasn’t all. Something was wrong with the smoke
detector in the hall, and the alarm blared all the time. So altogether, every day was pretty noisy.
Our apartment was near Harvard Square, close enough that I could walk to the office, so it was
convenient, but moving in right when they were doing major remodeling was a bit of bad luck. Still, I
can’t spend all my time complaining. I’ve got work to do, and the marathon’s fast approaching.
Long story short: my knee seems to have settled down, which is definitely good news. I’m going to
try to be optimistic about things.
There’s one more piece of good news. My public reading at MIT on October 6 went very well. Maybe
even too well. The university had prepared a classroom that had a 450-person capacity, but about
1,700 people poured in, which meant that most had to be turned away. The campus police were called
in to straighten things out. Due to the confusion the reading started late, and on top of that the air
conditioner wasn’t working. It was as hot as midsummer, and everyone in the room was dripping with