BROADCASTS.com

b'

There is an amazing new sculpture on Commonwealth Avenue. Carved out of a tree trunk, in mid-stride is a magnificent runner confidently bounding up Heartbreak Hill. I pass him every day on my way to Temple Emanuel and am always struck by how he never seems to run out of energy. A little more than 10 years ago, I ran a marathon. Well, \\u201crun\\u201d is perhaps too generous a word. I jogged for a super-long time until I crossed the finish line in what I had hoped would be under six hours. To this day, I am still not entirely sure what possessed me to do this.

Every time I pass that tree trunk runner, I think back to my marathon. The tree trunk runner was carved to life in the middle of a global pandemic \\u2013 at a time that the Boston Marathon has now been called off for a second season. The tree trunk runner is, by definition, rooted in place \\u2013 stuck \\u2013 on Heartbreak Hill, the hardest part of the route. Yet the sculptor filled him with eternal boundless positive momentum.