Istarted running at age 14, inspired in equal parts by an incipient teenage desire for athletic greatness, the movie Personal Best, and the fact that all my classmates on sports teams got a free period during gym class. What a naive young Roger Bannister I was then, and over the next eight years of high school and college: a sprightly aggre-gation of unbreakable bones, unassailable cartilage, and spectacular lung capacity-thanks, in no small part, to the expansive flatlands and ocean-laced air of my Northern California upbringing. As a teenager, stuck inside this perpetual springtime, running eased itself into my spoiled body and hooked in to stay, becoming my sport, my obsession, my thing.