The Sprinter

If Green Crack is your strain, this is your sign: the Sprinter. Lane four, the mango track, and the sun clearing the trees at 6:14, which is the gun.

Lane four, the mango track, 6:14 a.m. Out of the blocks the moment the sun clears the trees. Five seconds, which is about half a straight.

If Green Crack is your strain

You are first out of the blocks, and you were there before the groundskeeper. You decide fast and you mean it: fast is a decision you make at the blocks, and you have never once not made it. You count everything. You know what yesterday’s number was, and you intend to beat it before breakfast.

You are the cheerful kind of focused. You do not look over, because looking over is a tenth, but you keep count out loud for whoever is in the next lane, and you slap the hand that reaches up from lane five without breaking stride. People train harder near you and cannot say why.

At your best you are the sun clearing the trees: the thing that starts everybody else. You race what cannot be beaten and you try every morning anyway, and the number is good more often than not, and you laugh out loud when it is.

Your flaw is lane one. You do not know how to run slow, and the mangoes keep landing on the fresh paint whether you notice or not. You will get five more goes at it before the shade is gone, and you will take all five.

What you need is a fresh lane line every morning and one person leaning on a roller at the edge of the infield who asks one question and gets one answer. Give you that, and the first lap is always the first lap.

Your hour: 6:14 a.m., when the sun clears the trees
Your place: Lane four
Your object: A stopwatch
Your tempo: Out of the blocks
Your weather: The sun coming up like a dial
Your flaw: You cannot run lane one

Your people

The Night Courier (Sour Diesel)The Night Courier keeps your pace after dark. You two have never had to wait for each other, which is the whole friendship.
The Mountain Elder (Hindu Kush)The Mountain Elder will teach you to sit, eventually. You are the Elder’s favorite student, and the slowest learner.
Cindy at Midnight (Cinderella 99)Cindy at Midnight: two minutes is plenty, you both agree, and you both arrive laughing.

Things you say

The gun is when the sun clears the trees.
Nobody runs lane one. The mangoes own lane one.
Fast is a decision you make at the blocks.
Keep up and I’ll keep count.
Every lap is the first lap if you mean it.

A scene from your world

The first lap

The groundskeeper paints the lane lines fresh every morning and the Sprinter is the only one who notices, because she is the only one there. She arrives in the dark, sets her blocks in lane four, and waits for the sun to clear the mango trees at the end of the straight. When it clears the trees, that is the gun. There is no other gun. There has never needed to be.

Lane one is where the mangoes land. Nobody runs lane one. The trees lean over it like spectators and drop fruit on the fresh paint, and the groundskeeper repaints it anyway, every day, which the Sprinter respects more than she can say. She stretches, she shakes out her hands, she tugs the mango-orange sweatband down over her eyebrows and looks down the lane at the place where the sun will be.

The sun comes up here in the shape of a stopwatch. It is a big one, the size of the whole sky, and when its rim clears the top of the trees the Sprinter is gone, so quickly that the blocks rock back on their pins. She runs with her eyes on the dial. The second hand is the sun’s own light moving across the track, and she has never beaten it, and she has never once not tried.

Halfway down the straight she hears spikes in lane five. The kid from the house behind the trees, nine years old, late, laces undone, running flat out because she is running flat out. The Sprinter does not look over. Looking over is a tenth. She says, between breaths, “Keep up and I’ll keep count,” and the kid, to her enormous credit, keeps up for forty metres, which is twenty more than yesterday.

At the line she clicks the stopwatch on her wrist and looks at the number and laughs out loud, because it is a good number, and because the sun is still only halfway up and she will get at least five more goes at it before the trees stop throwing shade on the back straight. She jogs back toward the blocks and holds up a hand, and the kid, bent double in lane five, slaps it without looking up.

The groundskeeper leans on his roller at the edge of the infield. “Fast?” he says. “First lap,” says the Sprinter, which is the only answer she ever gives, and sets her feet back in the blocks to wait for the sun to clear the trees again.

The track

The blocks: Set in lane four before the sun is up, and set again after every lap. The pins have worn two grooves in the track that the groundskeeper has stopped painting over.
Lane one: Where the mangoes land. Nobody runs lane one. It gets repainted every morning anyway.
The stopwatch sun: It rises at the end of the straight, the size of the sky, and its light moves across the track like a second hand. Clearing the trees is the gun.
The mango trees: Two rows, one each side, leaning over the lanes like a crowd. In the back straight they throw shade until eight; after that the track belongs to the heat.
Lane five: The kid’s lane. Nine years old, laces never done up, forty metres today, which is twenty more than yesterday.
The roller: Where the groundskeeper leans to watch. He asks one question a morning and gets one answer.