At a quarter till 8am on a chilly Saturday, the sun has already been up for too long in D.C. - too many people have had time to notice it, and have poured onto the city's streets and bridges in a mass reemergence of the sunny-day runners. For Max Lockwood, however, it is just one more of the many good days for a run. He runs most evenings through the winter, when it is already dark, often with a group organized by Ben Cooke of the Georgetown Running Company. He loves Hains Point during the day, where all the wind in the metro area converges. Long runs are usually in Rock Creek Park, rain or shine, usually without a watch, on the weekend when he has nothing rushing him back home or to work. "As I get older," says Max, a young 36, "I think freedom is everything. Freedom to be yourself, and to do what you want to do."

Rock Creek Park is where I meet Max this particular morning, at Pierce Mill. He approaches the parking lot on foot, about 10 minutes late, having jogged the short distance from his Northwest DC apartment. "I'm notoriously late for everything," he admits later. Like many uncomfortable habits, though, a loose sense of time can interfere or be endearing. In Max's case, it seems to be the latter. In an e-mail, Chuck Moeser recalls, "The last time I raced Max . . . he showed up late for the start of the Veterans Day 10 km race and missed the start." Even in a language of ones and zeroes, you can almost see him wink as he advises Max, "Get a watch."

Gaining Speed

Max is wearing only shorts and a long-sleeve shirt-both bright red--along with equally striking black socks, while many people out that morning have tights, gloves, and a jacket. He is lean with little natural insulation, but became inured to the cold growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now simply finds it "invigorating." He may be wearing the wool hat just to make everyone else feel more at home.

After a slow acceleration to a consistent pace on the trail, he gives no hint that he can drop me at any time, even though we both know he can. I learn later that his sense of egalitarianism has been strongly influenced by 11 years of summer camp that emphasized this and other Quaker values. The result on this day is that equal priority is given to breathing, communicating, work, and fun.

He is teeming with ideas for ways in which running can and should promote itself while being a vehicle for positive change. Max's local heroes are the ones who do their part: Wilson Komen, Jim Hage, and Chuck Moeser. "They enjoy running, they give back in their own way through writing, coaching, community involvement, and keeping spirit going."

Centripetal Force

After crossing a flatter, grassy area and making a series of lefts and rights by memory and instinct alone, Max eventually leads us back to the road, pointing out Ross Drive, which he deems the "most beautiful fall run in DC." It does seem like the perfect place to, as Max says, "escape all the nonsense in the world. So often we are wrapped up in thoughts and schemes and information that really aren't relevant to who we are. I think running is a way to get in touch with yourself."

If you are fortunate enough to pass Max on a run, he will wave and say hi. Many people in DC, Max says, don't return it. His background is in team sports like basketball and soccer, but in order to engage with people and the psychology of sport these days, Max has to be creative to overcome the declining amity and spontaneity of the urban professional. For example, he will invoke the mental image of Muhammad Ali during a race to playfully out-psych competitors who take themselves too seriously. As he navigates through races and through life, he is guided partly by the examples he finds in biographies, and the belief that "Most of the people you meet in life, if you're a decent person and you click with them, are good people." It is this attitude that continues to pull even more people toward him, and how he ended up on a trail run in Arizona, led by the former record-holder of the Grand Slam of Ultra running, Ian Torrence, just because he struck up a conversation in a bar about what the local trails were like.

Time's Arrow

We return to the parking lot after about an hour, and Max does hill repeats while I write some notes and resume tapering for my own upcoming race. Max's marathon is in two weeks, but he shows no sign of tapering.

The appeal of the marathon to someone like Max is that it is impossible to extrapolate what mile 26 will feel like from the experience of mile 6 or 13. "In a marathon, anything can happen," he marvels. The lack of predictability in his daily life surely helped Max run his own race at the National Marathon in March. At approximately a six-minute mile pace, he felt "comfortable," and qualified for Boston. "I feel like Superman," Max declared afterward.

The earliest races Max remembers competing in are a 10K in Georgetown that is no longer running, and the Capitol Hill Classic. Six plus years after his arrival in DC and his first races, Max has remained inoculated to that specific urban amnesia for places where value has nothing to do with what can be weighed and measured. In his work with the Department of Interior's Office of Land Management, he travels to, and runs in, national park areas across the country. In so doing, he may also be conserving his own optimism and perspective.

Body Shop

Max finishes up his hills and we head over to a local coffee shop for a cup of caffeinated sugar. The only thing Max is concerned about in his running is the wear and tear. Yet, he may end up pushing himself more than some of his "serious" competitors when he runs through taper and rest periods, just because he enjoys it. The inevitability of physical stumbling blocks, like the foot pain that has been plaguing him recently, mean that Time itself may fill the role of Natural Enemy in Max's personal storyline. For now, he continues to sidestep the issue of time, saying that the 2006 Boston Marathon was simply the "most enjoyable race" he has ever run. Incidentally, it was even faster than his qualifier.

Renewal

As much as he loves the open spaces out west, or dreams of a solitary beach in Italy, Max isn't quite ready to unplug himself from the DC running scene. "I feel like I have a little cheerleading team out there," he says. "Like I'm reliving my youth, or some kind of fantasy." In the Cherry Blossom, "One of the guys I was racing against said, 'I knew you were right behind me, because I kept hearing people yell your name.'"

With every movement, even just walking across the room, you change your concept of time and space. Imagine the new perspectives a traveling runner like Max encounters on a daily basis simply by moving deliberately through his world. He belongs here precisely because he is unique, and his success is evidence that agendas don't accomplish nearly as much as a thorough application of joy. Wilson Komen may have said it best to Max: "God gives you just a one way ticket to go around this earth, and you just go. You Americans, you think too much about everything. Just go, Max. Just Go."