Ten kilometres, almost

Back in March, in a fit of something I still can't explain, I signed up for the ten-kilometre race Lyon holds at the start of October. I paid the entry fee online on a Tuesday at midnight, credit card in one hand and a piece of cheese in the other, and the next morning I told Tomás over breakfast the way you'd confess to something. Tomás is ten and has very limited faith in my physical abilities. He looked at me over his bowl and said, in French, that he'd bet me a packet of Carambars I'd stop before the halfway mark.

I took the bet. We shook on it. He gripped my hand with the gravity of a notary.

Seven months

Since then I've gone running three times a week, always along the Saône, always at seven, always with the feeling that my body is an old flat someone rented me without mentioning what doesn't work. I got to five kilometres in May. Seven in July, before the trip to Bogotá. In Bogotá I didn't run at all, because at two thousand six hundred metres you don't run, you survive, and I came back in September with the legs of a man who had spent three weeks eating almojábanas. Claire bought me new running shoes for my birthday, the kind that look like NASA designed them, and told me they were an investment and I'd better not let her down. She was joking. Mostly.

For years, Saturday runs came with a reward at the end: getting to the market and talking for a while with Fernando. Since he left in September I still go past the quai Saint-Antoine, but I don't stop any more. I buy from Mehdi when I need something, quickly, precisely, and keep going. I realised I had started running further simply because I no longer had anywhere to stop.

The Sunday

Race day was one of those Sundays Lyon saves for October: cold at eight and half sunny by half past nine, the mist lifting off the river as if someone were folding it up carefully. There were thousands of us. I had never been in the middle of so many people stretching at the same time. There was a man dressed as a quenelle, or something like one. There was a young woman running with a pushchair. I had the number 4127 fixed to my shirt with four safety pins and a dry mouth before we'd even started.

Claire and the kids stood at kilometre five, on the quay, because from there they could walk to the finish. They had made a sign out of a flattened cereal box. I saw it from far off: across the top, in Tomás's handwriting, it said "ALLEZ PAPA". Underneath, smaller, in Inés's wobbly letters and the coloured markers she uses for everything, it said: "¡VAMOS PAPÁ!". With both exclamation marks, the upside-down one too. With the accent on the a.

I went past them unable to say a word, raising one hand like a politician, and kept going. And from kilometre five to six I ran better than I have ever run in my life, with something in my chest that wasn't tiredness.

Kilometre seven

The route came back along the Saône, crossed the river and passed, because that's how cities are, along the quai Saint-Antoine. At that hour the market was still setting up. The stalls had their awnings half up, crates of apples on the ground, the smell of roast chicken just getting going. And at kilometre seven, more or less, in the same spot as always, was the stall that used to be Fernando's, with Mehdi unloading a van.

I stopped. I didn't decide to. My legs stopped on their own, the way you stop at the door of a house you used to live in. I stood there, hands on my knees, breathing like a bellows, while people streamed past on both sides. Mehdi saw me, half recognised me, lifted a crate of squash by way of greeting and said: "Ça va, monsieur?". I said yes. He offered me an apple. He wouldn't let me pay for it. It's the first time he has ever not charged me for something.

It must have been forty seconds. Then I set off again, apple in hand because I didn't know where to put it, and ran the last three kilometres slowly, but running. I finished in one hour, four minutes and some seconds I'd rather not remember. Inés was waiting at the finish with the sign already folded in four, and asked me in French if I'd won. I said no. She asked if I'd come last. I said no to that too. She seemed disappointed by both answers.

Tomás, on the other hand, already knew. He'd followed me on the race app on Claire's phone and had seen my little dot stand still at kilometre seven. He told me so with a lawyer's smile. I reminded him that the bet was about stopping before halfway, and that seven is more than five. He thought about it for a moment. He conceded, grudgingly, and that same afternoon brought me a packet of Carambars he had already eaten four of.

The sign is stuck on the fridge now, next to the to-do list, with "¡VAMOS PAPÁ!" facing out. I ate the apple at home. It was one of the ugly ones, with a brown spot on one side. It was perfect.