Back in January, editor Tish Hamilton told the Runner’s World art and photo department about the first-person story she’d be writing about those of us who will never become elite athletes — no matter how much we sacrifice, or how hard we train.
(A few months earlier she’d spoken on a panel with a man introduced to the crowd of runners as the Boston Streaker, due to all the Boston Marathons he’d run. Only 10 percent of all marathon finishers are fast enough to even qualify for Boston, which is what makes running Boston such an achievement. This particular runner has always made it in with ease, which has not been the case for Tish, who has also run Boston multiple times. Because she’s always just squeaked in, she introduced herself to the crowd as the Boston Squeaker.)
She told us more about all of her hard work and determination, which yields a performance that amounts to little more than mediocrity when compared to that of an individual who works just as hard, but who has a genetic predisposition to excel in athletics — like the Streaker.
Tish described her feature as “the life of a squeaker” — a phrase that immediately conjured up an image in my mind. I quickly sketched this drawing of a little mouse poking her head out of a giant running shoe, and hastily wrote above her the phrase that Tish had used, leaving out the “u” in squeaker in my rush:
Two months later, we published the feature in the May issue of Runner’s World. Here’s the opener, photographed by Grant Cornett:
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