I remember the summer I read “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s essential biography of Robert Moses. I lugged it everywhere: business trips, beaches, upstairs at bedtime, downstairs during downtime. It was as good a book as I’d ever read. I felt I was making rapid progress every day. And one day, I happened to look up and notice I was on Page 550.
Which meant I was only halfway home.
I have talked to friends who have run marathons, trained for them earnestly and religiously, and on the day of the race, even as their bodies are ready to go, even as they understand what they are in the middle of, they insist there is nothing more heartbreaking than when they realize – as their feet are barking, their lungs howling, as blood oozes from places it’s not supposed to ooze – they are only at mile marker 13.