The Pretender

At four o'clock this morning I ran four and a half miles. As usual, my pace was 8:40. Two girls were helping the road crew and holding markers at every quarter-mile. Each time they held up the sign, I was pretending that the numbers indicated a full mile, not just a quarter-mile. They put up the number one marker, and I pretended I had run one mile. But when it was sixteen, I had only run four miles-not sixteen. Then I had to stop pretending.
 
-13 September 1980 
 

[Source: "The Pretender" in Sri Chinmoy,  Run and Become, Become and Run, Part 4, Agni Press/Aum Publications, Jamaica, New York, 1981.]