Rosie Ruiz won the 1980 Boston Marathon.

Except she didn’t:

“I saw a woman coming out of the crowd on the south side of Comm Ave and start running. I thought it was a hoax or someone running just for the fun of it. She did not run with an elite runner’s style or form.”*

Rosie had run about a mile.

She never admitted to the fraud and even said that she would run another marathon to prove her running ability, though it’s unlikely she ever did. One reporter concluded that Rosie really believed she’d run the marathon; it seems she was trapped inside her own lies.**  Rosie was not an elite runner, but if she’d trained, she may have become really very good.

Running with Rosie is about being tempted to take shortcuts in life; we try to be something on the outside without being that something on the inside.  It’s about how we can fool even ourselves into thinking this life is normal.

It’s also about everyone being able to build their unique kind of capacity, whatever their age.  The kind of capacity that’s able to take the things that life brings and make something beautiful out of them.

Learn to do for yourself.  It’s the only way to broaden your skills.’^^

(*John Faulkner, friend of reporter Alice Cook.)
(**Eugene Peterson tells Rosie’s story in Run with the Horses.)
(^From Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.)