Old Reviews 2: Miracle Mile

I reviewed this short story by Alex MacLeod for Canadian Running.

In Miracle Mile, a short story by Alexander MacLeod, two 1500m runners on different paths prepare to run in the national championship. The race, however, is entirely beside the point. The story opens with the gruesome Mike Tyson ear-biting incident, a chilling foreshadowing of what happens when a person “gives in to his rawest impulse” or goes “all the way over to the straight edge.” One runner, Michael Campbell, has been at the top, and understands the sacrifice required to get there, but is considering retirement. “You have to make choices,” he says: “you can’t run and be an astronaut.” His pre-race hotel roommate, Jamie Burns, is on the way up. He’s pushed those limits, done all the right things. Of course he wins the race, but at what cost?

This story, yet another beautifully-made edition from Frog Hollow Press, will ring true to any runner who has had a sniff at top-level competition. The hotel room scene is as true a painting as any. The warm-up around the sub-division as well. Even the names, Bourque, Graham, Marcotte, will evoke a certain era for those in the know. For a recreational runner, it might be completely foreign, but it might be instructive—not in the sense of a training manual (there’s none of that here), but as a way of understanding those tall, thin wisps who run 10ks close to your 5k time. I’ve heard some people say that it must be easier for the “fasties.” No chance. Most people run for all the right reasons: fun, fitness, feeling good—a balanced pastime. The “pure specialists” in Miracle Mile are motivated from a darker place, it would seem. The story flips from the pure realism of the hotel scene, and the race itself, to the fantastical train racing scene, and the final, warm-down episode that bookends the Tyson opener with grim believability.