Dri-Fit fabric wicks away the sweat attempting to run down the perfect contours of her back and pool at the base of her spine.  Her calf muscles tense tight and defined under her smooth, tanned skin as she rides up in the flowerbed on to the toes of her customized Shox. An 8% Elastane blend stretches easily as I tug her shorts down over her hips and pull her legs spread.
Dogs run free from their owners on the other side of the trees, and bicycles race by on the road just over the fence that her face presses up against.  A family text on their mobiles, a fat jogger shouts into a hands-free. 
Over the quickening techno beat that pumps into my brain from tiny white earbuds, I can’t hear the dogs, or the swoosh of the bikes, or the fat bastard barking into the air.  Her lips are moving too, grunting and moaning, with the music building to its climax.  Nobody can hear her.
Four-way stretch compression-fit design holds my hand tight against her nipple, under the internal support frame of her sports bra top.  Her body’s as firm as I knew it would be.  My other hand feels the rippling strength of her thigh that I’ve watched flex and pound ahead of me for the past eight weeks. 
A grey band holds her long, blond hair back off her face in a ponytail.  It shows off the taut angles of her neck.  I grab a handful of hair and yank it back to make her muscles strain; to see the definition of her shoulders; to give her the hint of pain that I’m certain she wants. 
She screams uncontrollably, her lips opening wide, moving quickly.  Her eyes stare back at me over the vulnerable curve of her shoulder with a new fear that tells me she’s building to a climax in synch with the drums that beat in my head.  I grab her ass and pump her harder, watching her lips contort in rhythm.  In my ears a voice tells me, “Just do it.”
#
If Jeri hadn’t fucked some other guy, a lot, then my Greenpeace t-shirt would have stayed in the bottom drawer along with the old pair of Dunlop Green Flash.  It was the only t-shirt shitty enough to wear out running and get all sweaty, and they were the only sports shoes I owned.  The other option was drinking myself to sleep again, but the ads at Marylebone Station had seduced me into believing there may be a better way.
For me, the difference between a good day and a bad day was two minutes.  Leaving home at 7:49 meant a seat on the tube; leaving at 7:51 meant standing up next to a pin-stripe suit with wire-framed glasses and stubble already starting to grow through a pockmarked face, the textured pages of a broadsheet newspaper grating up against my arm skin.  A seat on the tube meant a comfortable half hour reading Now Is Your Chance - A Spiritual Adventure.  My flatmate Printy lent it to me the Tuesday before, after I realized that Jeri had fucked some other guy, a lot. 
That morning Now Is Your Chance explained that nothing is actually a chance; everything happens for a reason.  Having left home at 7:50 I ran down the escalator at Marylebone Station, rushing for the tube.  I chanced to look up and see the words “Run Down The Escalator” emblazoned along the wall, the whole length of the stairway.  Written in smaller typeface was “Nike 10k.  Run London.”  Tiny, in the bottom corner, it said “Just Do It.”  Now Is Your Chance told me, “Allow the chances to guide you.”
The Greenpeace t-shirt chafed against my man-nipples.  “Twenty minutes steady jog,” the website recommended for that first training run.  Nike.com had an eight-week training schedule, designed to get a novice up to completing the 10k run in under 60 minutes.  Virtual Trainer used time instead of distance to measure length, in order to encourage you to maintain a steady pace and run within yourself rather than try to cover a distance as quickly as possible.  That first twenty minutes, my Dunlop Green Flash scraped along the pavement, grinding out the final few minutes of blistered, lung-burning pain.  I hung on to the chest of my t-shirt, holding the sandpaper cotton away from my bloody areolas.  When the water hit them in the shower afterwards, they stung like the asshole of a gay man with diarrhea.
On Wednesday, Virtual Trainer said “Hill Training.”  Printy and I lived just west of Regent’s Park, a five-minute jog from fashionable Primrose Hill.  “Six one-minute hill climbs - full speed,” the schedule said.  A stitch doubled me over, biting at my guts, about a quarter of the way up the fifth climb.  The Greenpeace logo clung heavily to my back, glued on with my own thick sweat.  My face tightened with effort and my thighs burnt with a dull ache that would become cramp some time in the future.  A chubby girl giggled at me as she glanced at her watch and began a wobbly sprint up the hill.
Cramp arrived in my ass muscle the next morning as I lunged for the door, and the tube rode down the line without me, seats empty. Suits and The Times packed out the train behind.  Fucking Londoners. 
At ShopMobility, Kat’s trousers hung loose and bunched up ugly around her ass as she bent over and checked the pressure on wheelchair tires.  Barry, our volunteer, didn’t show up.  It was a bad day.  The first call came in bang on nine from old Mrs Harris, already at the Hammersmith Bus Terminal.  She requested an electric scooter.  As the manager, I designated myself to get the hell out of the office and deliver it. 
Reversing from the vehicle storage unit, people looked at me differently.  In London, only a brave cripple could elicit a smile in the street.  When I drove the ShopMobility powered scooter, boardroom bitches in pantsuits grinned, Soho media twenty-year-olds with carefully spiked hair nodded, and wankers from the city broke their self-important swaggers to feign empathy.  Mrs Harris clambered into the government-sponsored wheelchair, and I walked back to the office.    
My mum used to ride around in the scooters, before she got too ill.  After that, Dad had to push her, trying to understand what she was pointing at.  He got strong from doing it, and from lifting her in and out of the bath and their bed, and her clothes, and eventually up off the floor when she fell.  ShopMobility was a Godsend he said, and I guess that’s why I applied for a job there. Being a Godsend seemed like a good idea.  And girls got moist at charity workers.  They dried up pretty quick the first time they saw me in an electric wheelchair. 
On Friday, Virtual Trainer said “Fartlek (a Swedish word meaning speed play).”  Five minutes jog into Regent’s Park, just at London Zoo on the park’s northern edge, I broke into the suggested sets of thirty-second sprints followed by thirty seconds of slow jogging.  Sprint past the lion enclosure, jog past the petting zoo.  Sprint past the antelopes, jog past the lemurs.  Ahead of me the giggling girl and her plump ass wobbled into view.  She sprinted away from me every time I slowed to a jog. 
My legs weighed heavy jogging back to the flat.  Either the rough pavement of the park’s footpaths tripped at my Dunlops, or the damp lawns sapped at my strength.  Rounding the boat lake just a few hundred meters from home, some small energy came back.  My lungs let up, and my heart regained control.  My blistered feet took on a genuine rhythm.   Our angel in the wind carried me home. 
“Our angel,” Dad called her after she died.  Angela.  Mum.  He’d nursed her for seven years through Parkinson’s.  Twice a week the NHS sent round a helper, and for him that was his jogging time, followed by a couple of beers at The Barley Corn with his old mates.  We jogged together, just around the neighborhood, just a couple of miles to clear his head.  Coming over the motorway bridge, nearing our final straight, he’d pick up into a sprint, challenging me to a race.  She died on a Monday.  We hugged each other and said it was a release, “She’s with God now.” 
We jogged again one time, and as we came over the bridge he sped up like normal, but faster, and he screamed back over his shoulder “There she is!  Feel her at your back?  Feel her pushing you on?  That’s our angel in the wind.”  The next week we just went to The Barley Corn. 
#
 By no coincidence I went to the Nike store on Saturday.  Not just any Nike store, the mother store, Nike fucking World on Oxford Circus.  Beautiful images of athletes showed off beautiful products.  Maria Sharapova’s skirt flew up revealing the Nike swoosh on her pink panties.  Michelle Wie’s 15-year-old body stretched the elasticity of the children’s golf mini-skirt line.  A Brazilian athlete with the body of a Samba dancer Fosbury flopped over the high-jump bar in a green and yellow bikini.  Picking up a pair of gold trimmed Air Max Tailwind+, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to win that fucking race.
Virtual Trainer said “30 minutes steady jog,” but our angel was in the wind, and also in my golden Tailwind+.  One lap of the park in 20 minutes, and across to the giraffes and back in another 10.  I ran smooth, like Maria Sharapova was watching me and playing with her Swoosh.  Vaseline on my nipples lubricated Greenpeace, and Max Air units in the forefoot and heel cushioned my blisters. 
As the shower warmed up, Printy cracked open his first beer and handed one through the door to me.  Sweat still dripped off my forehead as Heineken hit my tongue.  Virtual trainer would have been disappointed, but it was Saturday night.  If Jeri hadn’t given the waiter a blowjob in the toilets of Pizza Hut while I waited at our table for the bill, then a night-in may have been an option.
Two o’clock and Printy definitely had the good-looking one.  Even as pissed as I was, mine looked rough.  I hadn’t spoken for a few minutes, and she scowled at me like I was behaving strange.  I re-introduced myself to her for probably the tenth time and asked her what she did for a living.  “Fucking unemployed,” she said.  “Oh yeah, I remember.” 
At the bar my hands grappled with four beers, but I didn’t know how they got there.  I bought four more because they could have been bad or something, then tried to pick up all eight because someone else could drink the bad ones anyway.  Printy had gone, but the rough girl was there.  She said something to me and took one of the good beers, which pissed me off.  My hand squeezed at her tit, and she didn’t move it away.  We kissed a bit.  My other hand inched up under her jean skirt.  Her thigh felt like raw pork belly.  She grabbed at my cock through my jeans and I got sober quick and walked away. 
Sat comfortably on the floor outside the toilet, Printy cradled six beers he’d found back at our table.  “Bitch wanted me to go back to Wimbledon with her,” he said.  “Told her I didn’t want to play fucking tennis.” 
 #
 Six weeks until race day, the banner on the escalator at Marylebone Station changed.  “Walk Up The Stairs,” it said.  “Nike 10k.  Run London.”  And “Just Do It.”  A familiar face passed me on its way upstairs.  It had lost some of the chubby, revealing the first signs of cheekbones.  A new-looking mid-length skirt showed off a definition in her calves.  She gave me a little nod of recognition from behind a free copy of Metro. 
It was no coincidence that I got a seat on the tube.  A schedule of Fartlek and hill runs and distance jogs led to vastly improved sleep, even with dreams haunted by thoughts of Jeri giving Printy a wank in the kitchen when she only got up to fetch two cups of tea.  Good sleep, coupled with increased speed and stamina, meant enough time to stop for a coffee and still get a seat on the train. 
Now Is Your Chance described a universal love.  That universal love guided life.  It manifested itself in what the ignorant perceived to be coincidences.  Some beings were open to that love, and some were not.  We had to give out love to receive love.  Good stuff.  
Kat was wearing tight pants, ShopMobility was fully staffed, it was a good day.  I sat in the office emitting love to all the invalids who phoned us.  A power surged through me and radiated out to them.
Virtual Trainer said, “Forty minutes steady jog.”  Three weeks in, training focused on building stamina and cardiovascular endurance.
Beginning clockwise round the outer path gave a view over the sports pitches in the center of Regent’s Park.  Across the other side, her plump ass cheeks bounced along, maybe ten minutes into her forty.  Her blond hair hung at her shoulders.  My angel in the wind carried me towards her, then eased up so I could hang behind and meditate on her love, focusing on the newly revealed curve at the arch of her back.
“Never Stand On The Right,” it said at Marylebone Station, “Nike 10k.  Run London.”  And “Just Do It.”  Five weeks left.  Kat was wearing a skirt with a slit up the side, and when I got to work she had a pot of tea on the go waiting for me.  Love radiated from her, the sweetest girl I knew.  Perhaps the exercise-induced endorphins made me do it.  Certainly, if Jeri hadn’t French kissed my dad over the washing up it wouldn’t have happened.  Three years we’d worked together, me judging my moods by how much of her leg I could see.  We were work colleagues; don’t shit on your own doorstep, don’t dip your nib in the company ink, and all that stuff.  But when I saw her legs and that pot of tea, I asked her out for a beer after work.
The barman sniffed the wine before he poured it for Kat.  The landlord told me the jukebox worked but it selected the wrong music.  Maybe I spent too long trying to get it to play Track 10 CD16, but I knew Kat loved that song.  She ordered the cod and chips, but they brought haddock.  After three hours she said we should talk about something other than work.  I told her she had good legs.  She said “no” when I invited her back for coffee.     
Next day, Kat wore baggy trousers.  She came into my office at lunchtime and said she fancied getting a drink.  I forced a smile and told her to enjoy herself.  She shook her head, like I’d pissed in her chardonnay.     
Virtual Trainer said “Rest.”  Now Is Your Chance said that one being’s love was visible to another open being.  A vibrating loveforce existed around every living organism, and it became visible by looking with an open heart.  After work I stood in Nike World and stared at Maria Sharapova, looking for her loveforce.  Not by coincidence, I spent £286. 
My new Nike+ Sensor slipped into a pocket under the sock liner in my Air Max Tailwind+.  The wireless receiver plugged into the charger socket of my iPod Nano.  I Logged on to Nike.com and the system synched with iTunes.  Virtual Trainer welcomed me to the world of Nike+.  A Virtual Running Partner appeared on the screen, keen to know me better.  In the edit screen I gave her blond hair and a curvy figure.  She looked at my profile and said she was looking forward to our run in Regent’s Park the next day.  I named her Maria.
“Hill Training,” said Virtual Trainer.  “Let’s Go,” said Maria.  It was 6am, before work.  I hadn’t slept for excitement.  Each hill sprint, she said in my tiny white earbuds, “Good going.”  Receiving the information emitted by the sensor in my insole, she knew my incline and my speed.  “You have climbed three hundred meters.”  Her programmed American accent caressed my eardrums.  “Fifteen minutes.  One and a half miles.  You have climbed seven hundred meters.”  Under her voice, music pumped.  My playlist synched to my run schedule.  Techno slowed to ambient as I slowed from sprint to warm-down. 
Endorphins rushed through my veins, my angel was in the wind, the train doors swung open as I hit the platform with a wheatgrass shot in my hand.  The day was glorious.  “Bad experiences guide us along our path, just the same as good experiences.  Thank your bad experiences for their help,” an Augustine monk told the hero in This Is Your Chance.  I thanked Jeri, and I thanked Kat.  And I thanked the rough bitch from the club.  Loveforces surrounded the pallid, tired faces of the tube.  Poor Londoners.  The losers sat closed off to the guiding force that surrounded them.  They sat and read about MP’s tax fraud and checked their horoscopes for good news.  They felt bad when The Times said famine; they felt happy when it said house prices up.  They sat right there in itchy wool-blend suits, with paisley ties biting at their necks.  My loveforce extended out to them. 
As manager, I redeployed myself to drive scooters all day, and promoted Kat to manage me.  She looked at me like she just wanted to be friends, and the promotion didn’t change anything.  So I let her know that I’d met a girl called Maria.  
Backing out on to the Hammersmith Boulevard, people looked at me differently, but who gave a shit?  They smiled awkwardly and were rewarded with my love.  The presence of a young cripple in a motorized wheelchair gave them opportunity to be good people, and their fake empathy gave me opportunity to radiate my love. 
When chubby girl ran in the park at 6pm that night, she passed me waiting on a park bench.  She’d been to Nike World, and bought customized Shox Experience+.  Fastened tight into a new lime-green Dri-Fit Pro-Core short-sleeve, her tits no longer bounced like fat balls; they wriggled.  On her second hill sprint she looked straight at me.  She held my gaze, and hinted a smile.  My chest flashed through the three unfastened buttons of my ShopMobilty polo, and my book perched open on my lap like it engrossed me.  My chiseled runner’s legs bulged through my khakis as I tensed them.  She knew it couldn’t be chance that we kept seeing each other.
Staring out of my computer monitor in the edit screen, Maria was now dressed in lime-green and newly customized Shox.  I scrolled the body type menu and took a few more pounds off her; altered her shape from large-framed to sporty.  Her hair was up today, in almost a bun, like every Wednesday.  She had completed the full hill sprint session as scheduled.  Her info synched with my morning run.  She smiled wide and said, “I enjoyed running with you today.”     
 #
 Two weeks until race day, the banner read “Run Up The Stairs," “Nike 10k.  Run London.”  And “Just Do It.”  I sprinted up the stairs, past the suits, past the drones of London.  Not even breathing heavy, not even sweating.  Maria would be dressed and waiting.
She’d be wearing the orange comfort-fit tee, with “Run Don’t Hide” written in yellow across the chest, like every Tuesday.  Her hair would be down, and I edited it slightly longer because she’d been letting it grow.  Virtual Trainer said, “Thirty minutes steady jog.”  Maria said, “Let’s Go!”
At six o’clock we’d meet as she came round the boating lake, and from there we’d run past the football pitches and up to the zoo.  Depending on her whim, we might turn left round the bottom of Primrose Hill, or else we’d run along the edge of the zoo and enjoy the novelty of lions in central London.  That day we took the Primrose Hill detour. 
In my earbuds her voice encouraged me.  “Good pace.”  “That’s a mile.  Good going.”  She ran steadily, twenty or thirty meters ahead of me, perfectly in synch.  Her ass pulled me along, her voice motivated me to keep up following her.  At the back end of Primrose Hill I lost sight of her for a couple of minutes as she rounded a natural garden.  Trees grew thick there, and wild flowers covered the ground, unkempt and untended.  Signs told anyone interested that the copse had not been cultivated but represented an example of the region’s native fauna.  Exiting the park area, on to the street, I saw her again, gliding along, barely testing the stamina in her sculpted legs.  “Ten more minutes.  Just Do It.”
At York Gate, next to the rose garden, at the south most point of the park, she turned off and left me the last five minutes to jog home on my own.  Later we relived the run with my iPod Nano synched to Nike.com and her telling me, “Great Run.  That Was Fun.”
On a scooter in the storage area, reading between drop-offs and pick-ups, Now Is Your Chance raced to its conclusion.  The spiritual adventure had brought the hero to Peru in search of his Chance.  His state of heightened awareness, and lovesphere connection, revealed to him the lost civilization of the temples of Machu Pichu.  The ancient peoples had not been wiped out by illness or ignorance, they had risen to another plain of existence as shimmering orbs of love, invisible to the mundane human plain.  Our hero battled with belief.  He had learned to trust chance and the guiding force of love, but remained unsure as the Inca leader beckoned him forward to join them. 
Gliding down the Hammersmith Boulevard, I smiled and meditated.  I steered the scooter through the streets of London, as love steered me through life.
 #
 “What the fuck are you doing in there?  Let’s go and get pissed.” Printy screamed through the wall.  “It’s student night at The Regent.  Pound a Pint, and lots of young girls.”
“I’m staying in,” I answered, hitting minimize on my browser.
“What the fuck are you doing in there?” he craned his flabby neck round the door, angling his eyes over my shoulder at my computer.  “You got some porn going on?” 
“I’ve got the race in a week, training tomorrow.  I’m not drinking tonight.”
“What’s that American bird’s voice I can hear from my room?  You got some bird in there?”  He glanced around, his puffed up eyes scouring the room for any trace of girl.
“Nah, I’m staying in tonight.”  And I turned away from him.
“Pussy.”
And again from down the hallway, “Fucking pussy.”
I maximized my browser, and apologized to Maria for his language.
 #
 The full length of the stairway it read, “Run, London, Run.”  And, “This Saturday.”  In Now Is Your Chance the hero trusted his instincts and as he ascended to a higher plain, he addressed me, “In every thought, in every thing, in every person, in every moment, Now Is Your Chance.”  Virtual Trainer said, “One hour steady jog.”  Maria said, “Let’s go!”
If Jeri hadn’t called just then to say she’d made a mistake and was sorry she’d hurt me, and she wanted to try again, then I wouldn’t have arrived late to the park and missed Maria by the boating lake.  It was two months since I’d found out.  Two months since Jeri had torn my heart out through my Jap’s eye, swallowed it and shat it into a glass with straws for her lovers to sip on and stay hydrated while they fucked her.  And everyone I spoke to, they had another story.  I told Jeri, “Everything happens for a reason,” and “I’m sorry, but I’m with someone else now.”   
My steady jog pushed to a canter, hitting the path hard with my Trailwind+.  Maria was across the opposite side of the football pitches already, so I pushed on.  My Angel was in the wind, and techno beats hit my ears hard.  “Steady your pace,” she said in my earbuds.  “Fifty minutes remain.”  “Steady your pace.” 
Passing York Gate on our first lap, only a hundred meters separated us.  When she looked back over her shoulder, her lips moved and she sped up.  This was a game for her, she drove me on to chase her.  Our rule had always been that there must be at least twenty meters between us, so I sprinted forward and closed the gap down to about twenty-five meters.  She glanced back and her lips moved again.  Music pumped in my head, and her voice said, “Thirty minutes remain.” 
Her back was sculpted perfectly.  The muscles in her legs pulsed as her Shox bounced effortlessly.  Her hair was down today, and flowed loose down her back.  Her butt led me around Primrose Hill.  We took a detour down some new streets.  I’d turn a corner and she’d be gone, sprinting away around a bend.  Always I followed and found her again. 
Our third lap, she turned off at York Gate, and I followed her.  She stopped outside a white Georgian detached house, just off the Marylebone Road.  I wanted to stop as well, and tell her “Great Run.  That was fun,” but her voice told me, “Five more minutes.  Keep Going.”  “Five more minutes.  Keep Going.”
Later, we reminisced about the run.  In the edit screen her hair grew another millimeter, cascading down her back.  In the body type menu, I changed the setting to Professional Athlete.         
Virtual Trainer advised one last run on the Wednesday.  “Thirty minutes very steady jog,” to stretch out the muscles after our one hour run.  My muscles felt good already.  Her muscles looked good too.  But we would meet for that last thirty-minute run.  “Training with you is awesome,” she said. 
The last words of Now Is Your Chance read, “Take your Chance.”  I ascended the tube from another day driving scooters and spreading love, and bounded up the stairs.  The banner read, “Just Do It.”  Again and again.  “Just Do It.”  Maria stared at me from the computer screen and watched me dress in my jet-black Dri-Fit Core Race Day Singlet, and Fundamental Micro shorts.  She knew they would match her jet-black Core Sports Bra Top, and Dri-FIT Team Race Women's Running Boyshorts.  Giving me the once over, she said, “Let’s Go.”
Techno megamixes pumped me up as I stretched my calf muscles carefully at our meeting point.  At six o’clock, manic Ibiza beats blended smoothly into CafĂ© Del Mar chill-out, engineered at 140bpm to synch precisely with my steady jogging pace.  I skipped back a song, waiting for her to arrive. 
Content couples rowed boats, hunting for a place to picnic.  Kids kicked balls at each other while their dads tried to teach them to do it properly.  A little girl scribbled with crayons, rushing to draw a swan before it pecked at her.  Maria wasn’t there. 
My heart pumped hard as her voice nagged at my ear “OK, Let’s go.”  “OK, Let’s go.”  My Air Max Trailwind+ began to run.  They followed our route that we had run for the past eight weeks, synched to the music, and to her.  Running was easy.  My mother carried me forward.  Love permeated all around me, my loveforce radiated from my being.  And there she was, jogging steadily past Primrose Hill.
In 8% elastane blend, her ass barely vibrated.  Supported by Shox technology, her calf muscles cried out my name.  In my ears she told me “You have 15 minutes.”  I pulled alongside her as we drew up to the old wooded copse.  Ancient trees vibrated love.  She glanced at me next to her, and I knew she was happy, and that she had missed me.  She had planned to be found here, by me.  Her Godsend.
Nothing was a coincidence.  Everything was my Chance.  I reached out my hand and said to her, “OK, Let’s go.”
She kicked out on the ground, acting like she’d been tripped or pushed, so I dragged her up.  Eight weeks of training together had made her strong, but she knew I was stronger, so she struggled, playing with me like she always had.  She slapped me, so I slapped her back, and then I held her wrists.  She wanted to jump over the fence and have me chase her some more, but her voice teased, “You have 13 minutes,” so I held her down, and her beautiful, soft cheek pressed up rough against a fencepost.  And then her ass curved right there, bent up towards me.   
And Dri-Fit fabric wicks away the sweat attempting to run down the perfect contours of her back to pool at the base of her spine.
END.
 

Chris Nicholson's writing has been commended by the Sean O'Faolain International Short Story Competition, highly commended by the Independent On Sunday, and reviewed by Chuck Palahniuk as a double finalist in his anthology competition. Chris’ travel writing has been published in The Telegraph and by Bradt Travel Guides.
Currently Chris lives in Kigali, Rwanda, running music and music therapy programmes for people living with HIV. He is a graduate of The Royal Academy of Music, also studying classical guitar in Spain with the maestros Jose Tomas and Alex Garrobe. He has performed and written and jogged slowly throughout the world.