CAPITULO 3: Características organizativas para la gestión administrativa de
3.1 Asociación de acueducto comunitario los Comuneros
DETROIT MARATHON
With his eyes still closed, Alvin asked Gordon how many stairs he thought he’d cleared
in college. Gordon perked up—he’d been staring blankly at the road in front of him,
hypnotized by cruise control and the traffic-less drive. Alvin had been finishing coffee
when he first got in the car, but for the past ten minutes, Gordon was sure he’d been
asleep.
“Individual stairs,” Alvin said. “Say there’s 20 between any two floors worth their
salt.”
“Is that right?”
“Architecture is an imprecise science.”
A car appeared in front of them, and Gordon applied the brake too strong,
swerving around it. He drove to Cavanagh every morning, but it’d been months since
he’d taken the freeway.
“I’d say I averaged at least 15 flights a day at State,” Gordon said. “Up and down,
that’s almost 600 steps.”
“For what, 32 weeks?”
“Make it an even 40—I took summer classes. We’re talking 650 times 40, that’s
like, uh, 24,000. Five years—you can do the math.”
“96,000,” Gordon said. “Selling myself short, I’m sure.”
“That’s pretty good, Gordy.”
“I was in my prime.”
The exit signs began announcing Detroit attractions—the Motor City Casino,
Ford Field, Comerica Park, the Joe Louis Arena. The Greyhound station. Gordon always
felt like he was submerging himself when he drove downtown. The world built up around
them as the freeway ramps circled and cut across. Walls and buildings now towering after
being vague markers for so long. Gordon felt like he should hold his breath, but holding
his breath meant thinking about breathing, thinking about the race. He exhaled.
“I played in the basement,” he said. “As a child. Plastic ball, plastic hoop. You
know.”
“I do.”
“I’ll admit there were also bleachers in my past.”
“Getting greedy and I like it.”
He let the engine run in the parking garage, the sound of the rattling exhaust
echoing off the concrete walls. When he killed it, Alvin took a deep breath an pulled his
backpack strings to his sternum. Gordon grabbed a bottle of water from the backseat. This is it—the words were on his tongue when Alvin interrupted.
“You’re going to say something inspirational, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“You were!” Alvin pinched his nostrils to mock Gordon’s voice. “They said we
“Fuck off,” Gordon grinned, but Alvin was already out of the car, high-stepping
to the stairs.
As a warm-up, they jogged down Fort to Woodward and lapped Campus Martius.
Gordon didn’t time the workout, but he did check the time. In college, he never strayed
from his routine: a jog around the complex an hour before first call, then stretches and
striders on the infield for second call, stripping down to his race gear just a few steps
behind as officials gathered the runners at the start line. The lack of precedence now was
unnerving. Ocelot, ocelot, ocelot. The pace was too slow for the mantra, but he went to it anyway because thinking wrung his stomach. Routine wasn’t superstition. Routine was
what he leaned on to calm his nerves.
They were early this time, at least. Gordon and Alvin ran silently, part of the
crowd. Gordon wondered if he’d eaten enough, if something as dumb as under-eating
would lead to his failure. Ocelot, ocelot, ocelot. Alvin glanced at over at him, and Gordon stopped mouthing the words, moving the mantra to his head instead. He would not think
of Boston. He would not think of the Trials. He would not think of the line until he was
toeing it.
He had them on the books at 2:30, fast enough to land them in the front corral.
Another Crim correction: here, they wouldn’t fight the hordes. There would be no
reindeer to push aside.
5:30s until kingdom come, he’d told Alvin at the beginning. It had been early enough in their training, holding a 5:30 pace was still an abstract idea. Some vague,
hardly possible thing they’d figure out later. Once or twice over the past four months,
waited until the 15K mark to take off for Olympic Gold, but he was starting to think he
could have told him the truth, that he planned on keeping a 5:15 pace as long as possible,
and Alvin probably still wouldn’t have done the math.
They looped back toward the starting line, and Gordon’s nerves multiplied,
shooting from his stomach to his fingers and toes. His hair follicles buzzed, his kneecaps
itched. This was where it started. They unpeeled their sweats and checked them in bags,
gave them to race officials to dump in plastic bins. The dull sky cracked for a sliver of
sunlight. “Aw,” Alvin said, looking up and slapping his thighs. Gordon decided to keep
his gloves at the start and toss the cheap cotton during the race.
A few men kissed spouses at the sidewalk, and Gordon briefly thought of Callie—
how she might have been standing at the periphery, waving, clutching a cup of coffee
between her hands. Alvin was already entering the corral, swinging his arms like
propellers. Gordon felt a little like he was heading off to war.
Alvin was more stoic now, more serious, his face hardening at the line. He held
out his fist and Gordon bumped it, the grooves of their knuckles locking and releasing.
Gordon wouldn’t have wanted to face him in the half-mile, a violent race of muscle and
speed. He didn’t notice it because he saw him every day, but Alvin in a zone was an
impressive sight. If he didn’t know him, he might have feared him.
Runners jumped up and down, ran in place, punched their quads, whispered,
rocked from one foot to the other. Gordon smiled as he shook his own legs out. Who here
had broken four minutes in the mile? There was energy in numbers, but not the kind he
In the seconds before the gun, it seemed absurd to think about pace. There were
26.2 grueling miles ahead of them, and the idea thy could regulate their speed to such
precision was laughable. It was impossible, after all. When it came down to it, their strategy was really no different than Jackson’s: get out of the gate behind the leaders,
leave the crowd at mile one, and jesus, man, try to hold on. A megaphoned voice called
the runners to attention, and Gordon became part of the crowd.
The gun cracked the cold, and it started.
Alvin jumped out into space while Gordon negotiated the crowd, and they found
each other at the back of the chase pack. About eight there, Gordon guessed, with another
ten or so leading. His muscles feigned weakness right away, but he called them on their
act. Just kicking the rust out. He realized he hadn’t done any striders, he hadn’t seen anyone doing striders. Slow-twitch motherfuckers.
The crowd, thick at the start, took them through the first half-mile, and Gordon
fought against the adrenaline that pulsed in response to the noise. Run smart, he told himself. Smart smart smart.
If he’d looked back, he would have been shocked to see the horde of nylon shorts
and sweat-wicking jerseys, Asics and Sauconys and Nikes all pounding, rattling the angry
city, white legs fading into sewer-belched steam. The steel monsters grimacing above
them. Gordon didn’t look back, or up, or even to the side. He and Alvin were part of an
exclusive race, separate from the spectacle. They’d earned their ticket.
The chase pack carved a pocket of warmth in the morning chill. Gordon felt the
everyone still breathing easy, talking in spurts. They let the leaders push them through the
first two miles in 5:17, 5:19.
A few men were wearing sponsored kits—Gordon saw Hansons and Adidas at the
front—but he had no angle to see names. It didn’t matter. There were no real elites here,
no Olympic champions or 2:0X guys. Not in Detroit. Most of them were brandless like
Gordon and Alvin, anonymous for now.
Gordon clocked them at 5:20 for mile three. 15:58 and counting, just over 16:20
pace for 5K. Shy of his goal pace, but nothing to worry about—the race hadn’t started
yet. They continued onto the Ambassador Bridge for the first international mile, and
Alvin threw up a fist in mock celebration. His first trip across the border. Gordon lost
himself in the water, the ships, the Windsor skyline. The simple detail of color. When he
checked back in, he’d fallen a step behind.
Once they eased off the bridge into Canada, Gordon started visualizing the shape
of the race. They’d double back in a half-mile, then follow the river northeast for a few
miles before taking the tunnel back and looping around to the finish. Alvin called him
crazy for memorizing the checkpoints, but it eased his anxiety to minimize the anarchy of
the course. Legend claimed the original marathon was run in one direction, no loops or
turnarounds, and while Gordon was glad he wasn’t chugging along barefoot in the
Greecian heat, fighting an incline to Athens, he wouldn’t have minded a race that went
26.2 miles one way.
The leaders were already building a cushion when they looped back at the Huron
church, and the chase pack dug in together to chip at the lead. It was coming—the test
ahead because he didn’t want them to feel impossible. At mile five, he shed his gloves.
And mile six, he took his first cup of water.
They went through seven in 38 minutes and change. In the Detroit-Windsor
tunnel, they made their move—Gordon increased the pace only to find that Alvin was
already going with him. They swooped around the chase pack from the back and settled
cleanly in front. It was a move made by feel, without a look or word between them. They
continued to push the pace a second or two faster. A small hurt, but stretched over the
next 16 miles, it would wear them raw.
Gordon’s instinct now was to settle, but Alvin kept pushing. The lead pack was
now 30 meters ahead and moving faster, and increase so subtle Gordon’s body had
caught it well before his mind. They had to move. He felt the first real pang of protest in
that tunnel, his first glimpse of cowardice, but he grimaced and fought it off, locked in on
the leaders. This was the moment distractions died.
The runners emerged, back in the United States, and turned a loop near the
Renaissance Center, west along the Detroit Riverfront. Everything was a test now, and
Gordon fought an echoing series of doubts: How? How? How? It was a familiar fight, different every time. He and Alvin alternated the lead. One went on, and so the other did,
too.
At mile nine they passed the Joe Louis Arena, home of the Red Wings, before
turning into the city for the next three miles, through Mexicantown and Corktown, where
the streets were half as crowded but twice as loud. The pace was below 5:20 now—by
only a few seconds, maybe, but the effort had tripled.
“Feeling it,” Gordon said.
“Yep.”
Alvin looked behind them, and Gordon followed suit. He was surprised to see that
the hungry pack he thought they’d been leading was now just a thin trickle of hangers-on.
He hadn’t noticed the footfalls fading, had no clue he and Alvin were running alone.
Ahead, two runners separated and turned the lead pack into the chase pack. The field was
disintegrating, a single cell divided thousands of times. Gordon did some rough, painful
math: he and Alvin were ninth and tenth. Maybe. His side punished him for the effort by
tightening into a stitch, and he spent the next half-mile kneading his knuckle deep into his
abs, hard enough to bruise.
“Who we tracking?” Alvin asked.
“Shit. Green kit?”
“Green kit,” Alvin confirmed, and they began their move.
Gordon knew all about good patches and bad patches, peaks and valleys, second
and third winds. He knew the third lap of a mile all too well. What he didn’t realize was
the length of such moods in the marathon. The first ten miles had been easy, but now he
was feeling it—a tight knot in his guts, a depleting pain. There was some chemical his
body was supposed to be producing, but the workers were on strike. He’d send his sweat
off in a vial and a scientist from the crowd could come back at mile 20 with a cure.
By the time they passed Green Kit, the chase pack was no longer a pack. At mile
15—a long stretch away from the city down East Lafayette—a trailing runner made a bid
to join the leaders. Another division, another lonely cell. Gordon and Alvin now had a
Alvin was punctuating his exhales with bursts of air through the gap in his teeth:
puh, puh, puh. He loved fishing, thrived on the ultimate control of a slow reel. In high school he ran the quarter in negative splits just for fun, peaking on the final turn and
dusting the field on the homestretch. This was Alvin’s thrill: not leading, but gaining.
Breaking.
They took one straggler, then another. Next to Gordon, Alvin was digging his
hooks deep and spinning hard. Their victims were tying up now—not racing, just trying
to hold on. Gordon didn’t want to be one of them. He fought the cancerous strain that had
spread through his chest to his lungs, his bowels. The pace would only get faster from
here. Just go, he told himself. Gogogogo.
Left now, inward toward Indian Village, ritzy, back toward the river. Halfway
through the 18th mile and Gordon’s mind was a cloud. Too early fuck fuck this
GOGOGO. He groped for something to ground him, something to hang onto—Alvin’s hook, anything—and a single, lucid thought broke through the haze: I am falling apart. Then another, the Frank Shorter quote he’d memorized weeks ago: “The marathon is half
over at 20 miles.”
“Mile,” Alvin barked at the 19th marker. Gordon looked down at his watch. His
hands clocked the split.
“5:14.”
“Come on. Gordon.”
Alvin sounded muted, a voice outside the coffin.
The anger in his friend’s eyes woke something in him. He turned to his right and
his left and saw they were in no-man’s land again. And they were running out of road.
The world came back to Gordon in pressurized pops of sound: the vapid cheers, the distant footballs, the hum of machinery. A splash of color—the blue shirt nearest
ahead.
Mile 20. He was waking when he should have been shutting down. This was
when the real race started—when no one felt good anymore. Gordon surged on instinct, and Alvin followed. Blue T-shirt was an island, a short hop from him to the leaders.
Nothing was automatic anymore—Gordon had to talk himself into the idea after the
initial surge, promising his body a brief respite on Blue Tee Island he knew he wouldn’t
take.
They caught him on the MacArthur Bridge to Belle Isle, their second trip to the
island in two days. Past the entrance, its new 20-dollar entrance fee. Past the
conservatory, the museum. Blue Tee—short and strong with a thick black goatee—finally
acknowledged them. He took water from a drink station and sipped for a few steps before
crumpling and tossing it behind.
“They getting slower. Or faster. You think?” Alvin asked. Blue Tee grimaced, or
he smiled. A shrug was implied.
Fourth, fifth, sixth: if no one made a move, this was where they’d finish. Gordon
thought about going, but nothing happened when he sent his legs the signal. He was
stretching it now, pushing against a limit of solitary effort. Just one step, then another,
It was Alvin unlocked another gear, surging ahead and forcing the other two to
follow. Gordon’s muscles screamed, a for-real kind of pain radiating through his bones,
the pressure so fierce it seemed it might shatter his skull. There was some strength to be
unlocked, but he had no access. Alvin gained five meters, then ten.
At mile 22, Gordon remembered he could forget pain. Not forever, but for
minutes at a time. He remembered it like a key long forgotten, right when he needed it
most, pummeling with his fists an unbreakable door. He gathered the pain from his
throbbing ankles, his bloody arches, his over-pumped arms. He took it from his legs,
dead, his barking knees, the hot blade slicing from his tailbone to his neck. He packed it
in a box, folded its edges, sealed it shut. Enter Gordon-numbed, Gordon reduced-but-
made-better. It took every part of his working brain to hold the box, collapse upon it—to
balance it, trembling, weighing it closed. The rest of him, he let go.
Three miles out, Gordon began the longest kick of his life. Alvin gasped
something in protest, but Gordon hardly heard him. Blue Tee stuck for a moment, gained