25 Days and Mile 25

Many DFMCers have described the overwhelming emotion upon reaching Mile 25 (where Beacon crosses over the Mass Pike, just before Kenmore Square). This is where the Dana-Farber crew cheers; this is where our Patient Partners stand waving the posters and signs we made together earlier in the spring. Many stalwart runners freely admit to weeping as they pass their friends, old and young.
Will I cry? Hard to know what I will be thinking or feeling after 25 miles. But should I cry, I will be in good company, real and literary. Literary? Here are the protagonists from my two favorite novels. (Everyone should read Moby Dick; my younger readers may want to wait a few years before beginning Gravity's Rainbow -- I had to edit even the quotation below.) The moments that bring these men to tears are in many ways the pinnacles of their stories.

From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

. . . and now, in the Zone, later in the day . . . after a heavy rain he doesn't recall, Slothrop sees a very thick rainbow here . . . and his chest fills and he stands crying, not a thing in his head, just feeling natural. . . .