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71:55:00
Less than seventy-two hours now remained before the start of the Lake City Marathon. Those runners who accessed the race’s Web site could see a countdown clock at the top of the home page showing the hours, minutes and seconds slipping away:
71:55:00. 71:54:59. 71:54:58.
That clock and others—including one at the marathon Expo, one in the lobby of the race’s headquarters hotel and one each over the start and finish lines—would continue counting until 9:00 on Sunday morning, stopping at 00:00:00. At that point, 50,000 runners would begin streaming across the starting line, their movements measured both by the starting line clock and digital watches on each runner’s wrist.
The Web site clock reached 71:54:30, then 71:54:00, then 71:53:30. Runners all over Lake City—in fact all over the world, 50,000 entrants from 121 countries—found their lives transcribed by the ticking Web site clock.
71:53:00. 71:52:59. 71:52:58.
And so early on a Thursday morning, the clock continued, relentless in its countdown.
At the same time Celebrity X waited on an airfield an ocean away, Peter McDonald, director of the Lake City Marathon, paused briefly on a balcony overlooking a convention hall so huge it could have hangered dozens of airplanes the size of the one now landing near Rome. This was Pritzinger Place, the city’s main convention center. The center’s North Hall was 452 feet wide by 790 feet long, a total of 369,000 square feet, larger than the playing fields in most stadiums. If you wanted to be a major player in the convention business, you needed exhibit space that large and more. In addition to the North Hall, Pritzinger Place featured three more major halls plus other exhibit space in satellite buildings.
Here, the marathon’s Health and Fitness Exposition—or “Expo” as most called it—would begin the following day. After set-up on Thursday, The Expo opened on Friday and lasted two days, leading to the Lake City Marathon Sunday morning. Peter, a man in his early thirties, a champion runner in high school and college, remembered when he first became director of the Lake City Marathon with barely 5,000 runners, a tenth of the current field. He got the job because of a scandal involving the previous race director that resulted in the loss of the event’s main sponsor, a sporting goods company. In terms of respect and finances, the Lake City Marathon had sunk to so low a spot that few within the running community gave it much chance of surviving.
Peter seemed like an unlikely candidate for the top job at even a failing marathon. He had competed with some success on the European track circuit for several years after graduating from Notre Dame University with an engineering degree, but soon realized that matching strides with the fastest in his sport was beyond his ability. Still sorting out his career options, recently married, Peter returned to his home town and accepted a temporary job with the marathon and ascended to the position of race director by default: because nobody else wanted the job. Race founder Niles Wendell, who fired his predecessor, told him: “You want the job, kid, you got it. But don’t be surprised if your salary checks bounce.” None had. Wendell, a wealthy local architect and running fanatic, may or may not have been joking. But the size of those checks remained small Peter’s first few years as director. Fortunately his wife Carol had a job working in a bookstore that helped pay the bills.
Peter McDonald was forced, because of lack of finances, to stage the Expo in the basement of one of the downtown hotels, a small space yet he still had a hard time coaxing more than a few dozen exhibitors to come. It was a measure of how much the marathon had grown that he now used Pritzinger Place’s largest hall and filled it with 150 or more exhibitors. Too bad Carol no longer was around to share his success.
Peter could not help but consider the marathon’s growth and its position and prominence among city events as he looked down on the booth of the race’s current sponsor, the Lake City Bank. The bank’s booth had as its centerpiece a Jumbotron screen, showing scenes from previous races. Beneath the screen a clock displayed the time remaining before the start of the marathon:
71:52:57. 71:52:56. 71:52:55.
He liked to think of the Lake City Marathon as his marathon, although neither he nor founder Niles Wendell owned the race. (Technically, the Lake City Marathon was the property of a non-profit consortium.) But as director, Peter was its most visible spokesperson. As the marathon grew so did his salary, now six figures.
The marathon stood as a key player among Lake City events, particularly when it came to generating revenue: more than $120 million spent in hotels and restaurants and other visitor activities, according to a convention bureau report. Although Lake City had teams in all the pro sport leagues, and although the city hosted hundreds of conventions, large and small, marathon weekend occupied a niche special and apart from all other city activities. Those responsible for making the city hum loved the Lake City Marathon. The marathon served as a Welcome-All activity in which most citizens of Lake City could participate: as spectators and volunteers, if not as competitors. It seemed as though almost everyone scattered in workplaces across the city had a friend, or a friend of a friend, who was running the marathon. Monday after the big race, finishers arrived at those workplaces with medals proudly hung around their necks to be welcomed at the water cooler as heroes and heroines. Of course, within a week those same seemingly supportive workers would go back to questioning their sanity, wondering why they felt compelled to run all the time, asking questions like, “How far was this marathon?”
Lake City usually accepted its heroes—politicians, business leaders and gangsters—without insightful analysis. A sprawling and brawling metropolis located on the Great Lakes in the heartland of America, Lake City went from frontier village to major metropolis in the space of a century. Originally a center for manufacturing and transportation, Lake City lately had begun to shed its blue-collar image and attract more and more corporate headquarters and the electronic companies that proliferated around them. The city contained nearly three million inhabitants: triple that number if you counted those within its metropolitan area. Along with Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York, the Lake City Marathon ranked as one of the world’s major marathons, each year attracting 50,000 participants to a lightning fast course that almost screamed: “Come set a world record!”
Nevertheless, despite its popularity among the masses, Peter McDonald knew that the Lake City Marathon faced a major financial crisis. This was the final year of the marathon’s contract with sponsoring Lake City Bank. A mammoth Irish conglomerate named Shelaghi recently had swallowed that bank and—according to insiders within the world business community—might not continue to finance what bankers from abroad certainly could consider a silly sporting event. The bank contributed several million dollars a year to the race budget, a sum not easy to match, particularly during a down economy. Peter’s own contract as race director also ended with this year’s event. If the principle sponsor abandoned Lake City, Peter’s job and six-figure salary could be at risk. Several Shelaghi representatives, including executive manager Dennis Lahey, were in town to observe the marathon and maybe decide whether or not to allow it to continue under the bank’s sponsorship.
71:52:54. 71:52:53. 71:52:52.
Peter also worried about the weather. He had been in contact with weatherman Vaughn Johnson earlier this morning. Johnson worked for TV3, the same television station that sponsored the marathon telecast. Johnson was a runner who planned to run the marathon himself. He was predicting high 80s and clear skies: Good for the beach, bad for running 26 miles 385 yards. If temperatures continued to rise, Peter might need to shorten or even cancel the event to protect the health of the runners, an unpopular choice he did not want to make.
71:52:51. 71:52:50. 71:52:49.
Also a problem was Peter’s main athletic attraction, world record holder Aba Andersson of Sweden. Earlier that morning, he received a call from Aba’s husband Bjørn, informing him that Aba was sick. Neither Bjørn nor Aba knew or would admit why, but she had thrown up that morning and still felt queasy. Food poisoning? The flu? Maybe she would recover in time to run, maybe not. Peter told Bjørn and Aba to skip the noon press conference. “Just get well,” he said and added not to worry about the $150,000 already paid her as an appearance fee.
Peter’s recommendation to Bjørn that Aba not feel obligated to run just to fulfill a contractual obligation was not entirely altruistic. The Swedish runner’s decision to choose Lake City for her next world record attempt already had attracted media attention more than money could buy. More reporters had applied for press credentials than any previous year. If Aba failed to run, it offered a problem more for the media seeking story lines than for him as race director. Peter did have one more story line he could feed the ravenous reporters, another celebrity to attract their attention, although Peter needed to be cautious about revealing the identity of the man he called Celebrity X.
71:52:48. 71:52:47. 71:52:46.
That celebrity was the individual about to board the Gulfstream at the airfield outside Rome. He was a celebrity whose fame was so great that his appearance would cause an instant sensation, not only among runners, but among spectators along the course. This was an individual better known by people around the world than Oprah Winfrey, who ran the Marine Corps Marathon one year. More famous than Lance Armstrong, who ran the New York City and Boston Marathons. At the individual’s request, McDonald had hidden his identity under a code name: Celebrity X. Nobody on his staff knew Celebrity X’s identity, or even the code name! The celebrity was actually an old friend of Peter’s from the East Side neighborhood where they both grew up. The pair had run cross-country together in high school. X had warned Peter: “If the media finds out, it will make it impossible for me to run.”
Celebrity X was the ultimate paparazzi magnet, an individual who needed to be protected from his public, both those who loved him and those who did not. When Peter McDonald discussed with Celebrity X the possibility of his running the Lake City Marathon, their major concern was security: How could they get him to the starting line without causing a stampede? People could trample each other seeking to see him up close, touch him, or secure an autograph.
More a problem, Celebrity X could be a target for any number of groups or individuals seeking to protest his appearance, or even do him harm. You cannot easily provide security in a race featuring 50,000 runners and viewed by a million spectators. You cannot surround an individual with several dozen bodyguards. You cannot encase him in bullet-proof glass. The best security, the two finally decided, was total secrecy. If people did not learn about Celebrity X until the last minute, the moment X stepped onto the starting line, he might be able to run and complete his marathon without disruption. Despite X’s fame, maybe because of it, Peter knew the runners would accept his presence instantly and provide their own protective shield. He would have 50,000 bodyguards.
Yet on several occasions, Peter almost picked up the phone to contact Celebrity X and tell him, “No, this is impossible. We’ll never pull this off.” Preventing Peter from impulsive calls was the wall built around X, the many layers of people protecting both his privacy and his public persona. Though Peter was among the few people in the world who knew X’s private phone number, even he did not always get past the protectors.
71:52:45. 71:52:44. 71:52:43.
It was late afternoon outside Rome, early morning in Lake City, as X’s Gulfstream rolled down the runway soon to bridge the distance between two great cities of the world. Even as Peter stood on the balcony in Pritzinger Place, his mind skipped past the many problems confronting him this year to the task of the moment: an interview with a reporter for TV3, the channel that would televise the race live on Sunday. On the main floor below, McDonald spotted a group of waiting people, one of them a muscular man with a TV camera on his shoulder. He recognized the cameraman: Edmund Giesbert. Edmund, a Vietnam veteran, had been around a long time. The group was waiting in the booth of Metro Foods, one of his sub-sponsors. Next to the cameraman stood a long-legged woman: dark-haired, wearing a red blazer, the uniform of TV3 Sports. She held in one hand a microphone. He did not recognize her. She must be new. Attractive, he thought, but aren’t they all?
The woman glanced up toward the balcony and spotted Peter. She smiled and waved to indicate recognition, but maybe also to show just a bit of impatience. Yes, I’m late, Peter thought. Nearly eight minutes late, he realized looking at his watch. Peter McDonald politely returned the TV reporter’s smile and wave and moved toward a bank of escalators, rehearsing in his mind as he did several bullet points offered him by his media director, Nelson Ogilvie, for this interview and others during the weekend:
- Say as little as possible about the sale of the bank.
- Discuss the weather, but do not panic people with dire predictions.
- Admit Aba Andersson might not run, if and when that fact becomes known, but stress the strength of the field even without her.
Peter would have added one more bullet point: Do not say anything about Celebrity X!
Stepping onto the escalator, Peter amused himself by the thought that even Ogilvie did not know about that curve ball, although he might need to warn the media director at least before the start of the race. Ogilvie understandably would be furious at not being on the Need-to-Know list, although for the present that list had only one name on it other than that of Peter McDonald, Celebrity X himself.
71:52:42. 71:52:41. 71:52:40.
The countdown continued and would not stop until the horn blew Sunday morning at 9:00, signaling the start of the Lake City Marathon.