Brief but Brilliant

I was a top athlete—the envy of my peers. On race day, townsfolk would turn out to cheer me on. I was a local hero, unbeaten in three years—that's one hundred and eighty five races to you. I lost count of the number of trophies and medals that I accumulated over that period. My uncle Al, not known for his carpentry skills, handcrafted two cupboards—one for my silverware, the other for my ego.

Then, on my eleventh birthday everything changed.

I can trace the start of my prolific yet brief career to an occasion when I ran a mile in eight minutes while being chased through a forest by a celibate Jesuit. Though he was persistent in a way that only celibates can be, he never caught me—for him it was all about the chase. I knew this because he had made it virtually impossible for himself—negotiating a forest floor in four inch heels is tricky. So it wasn't a shock when I heard one day that he'd broke his heel, fell down an embankment and drowned in a swamp. At his autopsy the coroner put the cause of death down to a combination of misadventure and ruptured bunions. He was eighty two.

After three months of these not so trivial pursuits I had broken the six minute mile and had grown nine inches taller. When sports day came around, I swept the boards, winning every race I entered. Winning became an addiction—I wasn't winning often enough so I quit the long distance stuff and concentrated instead on sprinting. Sprinting meant that I could win more races more often.

I knew my days at the top were numbered at a community race day in Larry McCrudden's field on a balmy Sunday evening in the fall of 1974. On the day that I was planning to show off my new sideburns, Charles "Crunchie" McCormack emerged from the pack and pushed me all the way to the finish line in the 100 yard dash. Crunchie had gone from runt to antelope in a matter of weeks and though he still made farmyard noises—suddenly he was heir to my throne. Yes, I had won but something died that day.

And so it transpired, the growth spurt that I had experienced three years previous had a hidden non-exclusivity clause. All of a sudden everyone was five feet ten with pubes. And they could run as fast as me.

Rather than be considered a mere mortal and suffer the ignominy of defeat I decided to quit while I was ahead. On the eve of my thirteenth birthday I retired from athletics, my pride intact, my reputation preserved, forever.