Racing To Forge An Identity
Forrest Gump, the title character in the 1994 movie, saw life simply. Explaining his years-long crisscrossing of America on foot, he said: “I just felt like running.” Markelle Taylor runs long distances too, but his reasons are more complex.
“It helps keep me focused and on the right track, almost like a therapeutic guide,” he told The Times. “The mental and physical aspect is connected to life’s challenges and the different adversities we face. It keeps me humble.”
In April, Mr. Taylor ran the Boston Marathon in 3 hours, 3 minutes 52 seconds, but the challenges and adversities he was keeping pace with were different from those of the other runners. It was his fifth marathon, but his first outside San Quentin State Prison in California, where he had spent almost 18 years for assaulting his girlfriend, causing the premature birth and eventual death of their child.
“At the time, I thought I was a man, but I wasn’t,” he said.
Mr. Taylor, who was himself a victim of domestic violence as a child, had been a track star in high school. In prison, where he would become known as the Gazelle of San Quentin, he started running again to fight off despair after a friend who was denied parole killed himself.
“Running was a form of freedom,” he said.
If they do not think of it in terms of freedom, domestic workers in Hong Kong at least see running in terms of equality. There are 380,000 foreign maids there, and a growing number of them are spending their weekly day off — plus early mornings and late nights — training and competing in trail running ultramarathons. The sport presents them “the opportunity to be treated as equals in a society that often discriminates against them,” Mary Hui wrote in The Times.
Fredelyn Alberto is one of those workers. Ms. Alberto, a 30-year-old from the Philippines, has been making a name for herself on the trails and won a 45-kilometer ultramarathon in January.
“On weekdays, people say, ‘Oh, you’re a domestic helper,’ ” she said. “On weekends, on the trails, they say, ‘Oh, you’re a good runner.’ ”
Jaybie Pagarigan, who is 39 and also from the Philippines, said their achievements tells people: “We’re not just a maid. We’re not just poor people.”
Dolly Vargas Salles, a 40-year-old Philippine worker, said: “This is sad, but this is reality — that when you say you’re a domestic helper, you’re a small thing. But for me, no. I can live as who I am. This is what trail running has done for me.”
For Tom McGrath, the importance of distance running has reached even higher. It has been a matter of survival.
Mr. McGrath, 69, has been called the Irish Forrest Gump, a star of extreme long-distance ultrarunning. When he was 27 he ran across America in 53 days, a record. He recently finished what he says was his last long-distance run, from Belfast to Dublin. In between, the road has been more treacherous. When he was not running, he was drinking. And it nearly killed him.
After being told that liver failure was near, he did what came naturally: He started running more. He has been sober for nearly 10 years now.
He still looks back regretfully on the years of alcoholism. “If I could turn back my clock, I would change a lot of things,” he told The Times.
He cannot, of course. But at least he found a way forward.