One of my strongest memories isn’t tied to any one specific moment. Rather, it is a composite recollection of how Anfield – Liverpool’s home ground – always underwent a dramatic transformation during evening matches. The change was due to how the sun set over the course of the match. By the game’s end, the bright sunlight that bathed the pitch at kickoff had given way to full darkness, leaving the field completely illuminated under floodlights. The contrast between the sun-soaked scenes at kickoff and the intense glare of the lights at the end of the match always seemed to ratchet the pressure of the knockout rounds up to an unbearable level. Someone was about to go home, perhaps undeservingly, and the darkness lurking just beyond the reach of the Anfield lights always felt like a reminder - in this cruel tournament, teams were forever just one mistake away from going home (1).
Last spring, I was in the midst of a break from running when this decade-old memory about Anfield’s in-game transformation came back to me. For the most part, I hadn’t missed running at all up to that point during my break. But when I thought about Anfield’s transformation, I was reminded of how much I enjoy running into a sunset and this led me to suddenly recognize how much I missed running.
The ideal time for me to start running is similar to the conditions at kickoff on a big ‘European night’ at Anfield – the sun should be high enough in the sky that it would not cross any driver's mind to turn on the headlights. The direction of the run doesn’t matter as much as the timing. The key is to set it up so that I can turn west just as the sky starts to change color. Sometimes this is possible by just running along the Charles River – ‘chasing the sun’, so to speak. Another good approach is to run north into Somerville until the appropriate moment comes – then, I turn west and follow the fading light into Cambridge. Once the sharp colors of sunset start giving way to the dull shades of purple and blue, I angle toward home, following the just-flickering streetlights all the way.
The thing I like most about these runs is how it feels so dramatic to set out in the daylight and return home in darkness. But what is the drama of running a couple hours just to get back to where I was? It’s not the light or the sunset or the darkness, I’m sure, because I've walked home after watching a sunset without ever once considering it dramatic. No, I think by ‘drama’ I mean the familiar mixture of anxiety, fear, and pressure that comes anytime I sense the safety net that’s always waited below me has been temporarily pulled away. It’s the safety net that comes from being young and fit and confident, ready to run any distance over any terrain, ready to run on forever, and this safety net always feels missing when I run alone outside at night. For some reason, as the darkness closes in everything I've ever relied upon all my life to make it home seems insufficient. Even though it’s been ages since I’ve pulled up injured on a run, the sunset and the ensuing darkness slowly raise the unavoidable, inevitable question – if something goes wrong, how will I make it home?
I don’t have a great sense for why I like this feeling. It’s not just on these ‘sunset runs’ that I enjoy the feeling – this ‘drama’ is the same reason I enjoy running at the start of a snowstorm. The changing conditions of the coming storm serve as a subtle reminder of how I have no choice but to rise to the challenge of the workout. And if I don't have what it takes? I guess I’ll just suffer the consequences that simply do not exist when I run on perfectly sunny afternoons. I’m content with the arrangement and I always give it my all but... I don’t really know why I like it.
Maybe the drama comes from something else entirely – it isn’t the question of whether I’ll rise to the challenge but rather the knowledge that one day, I won’t. One day, no matter how well I’ve prepared, no matter how unfair it is, no matter how much I’ll regret it, I know I simply won’t be able to make it to where I want to go. It’s the same thing that makes the Champions League so dramatic. In this tournament, it’s not so much that a team eventually lifts the trophy, but more like it just avoids being swallowed up by the darkness, round after round after round, until no other team remains. There’s no recipe for success when almost every team gets knocked out. I do know one thing, though – a team unwilling to stare back into the darkness and fight with everything it has will always regret the night it never gave itself a chance.
Footnotes / Rafa, the magician…
1. Liverpool 1, Chelsea 0 (Liverpool advanced, 4-1, on penalties)
The best specific example of this would be the 2007 semifinal against Chelsea. Hosts Liverpool entered the second leg of the two-game series needing one goal to draw level. This goal came early in the match courtesy of Daniel Agger – when the ball hit the net, everyone celebrated wildly in the bright late afternoon sun. At that point, it felt like we were going to win 3-0. By the end of the match, though, the floodlights were on and it just felt like the tiniest misstep would lead to the Chelsea goal that would send Liverpool crashing out of the tournament.
I’d imagine Benitez, Liverpool’s great manager, aged about three years during this game. His response when the game went to a shootout is legendary – he sat on the ground, resembling a tired tourist waiting for his entire family to emerge from a fast food restaurant’s plastic restrooms, and waited patiently for fate to summon him once more to his weary feet.
