Quitting Time

A Defense of the DNF

Never underestimate the heat in Tennessee.

It creeps up on you. Sultry tendrils rising from Appalachian valleys. Steamy moisture flowing atop rivers that bend around the Blue Ridge Mountains. Toasted tangible above the Cumberland Plateau in misty furls of humidity. By summer, the heat sizzles on the great grassy basin around Murfreesboro before boiling over the eastern drains along the Mississippi.

I knew this. I’d raced in Tennessee before—a dreadful 5K at the Sea Ray Relays in Knoxville, several throat-searing indoor races around the Johnson City Mini-Dome. You don’t trust a thermostat in Tennessee: the humidity makes a liar of it. But as a dog that returns to his vomit, so a fool tries to run a marathon in Nashville.

And so, standing on the starting line of the Country Music Marathon in 2009, I watched the thermostat on a bank’s electronic marquee tick upwards. The gauge blipped from 77° to 78°.

I turned to look behind me. Thousands were packed into West End Avenue. As the sun creep…