Will is a strong runner. Diamond hasn’t run 13 miles yet. “I’m hopeful,” Forman says.
On the morning of the marathon, Diamond wakes up at 5 in her grandmother’s apartment. By 7, she arrives at the meeting place at RFK Stadium.
Teens Run DC, an after-school mentoring program started by a Chevy Chase clinical psychologist, matches adult long-distance runners with students in D.C. high schools. The mentors and students train to run marathons.
At 7:22 a.m., five Cardozo students walk up the hill, blending into a sea of 15,000 runners.
Diamond starts out at a slow, steady pace. She feels good. The weather is cold but sunny. She runs down East Capitol Street. Up Constitution Avenue. Through Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights.
But by the nine-mile marker, she is crashing. She slows down. She stops. She doesn’t want to run anymore. A mentor suggests Diamond call her mother and grandmother, who are somewhere ahead on the race course waiting to cheer Diamond on. Diamond tells her grandmother on the phone that she is hungry. Her grandmother promises to bring her a sandwich after she crosses the finish line. Diamond starts running again, with difficulty. She hasn’t run this far. Perhaps it’s too far. But then on 13th Street, Diamond sees her grandmother and mother standing on the side. They are cheering her. As she passes, they run with her for half a block.
“Hey, that’s my baby!” Diane Diggs says.
“My mom, my brother and I were waiting just to see her,” Roxianne Diggs would recall later. “Then we spotted her. It just felt good. ... I’m really proud of my baby.”
A couple of miles ahead, Forman is waiting at the finish line.“‘Where are my kids?” he asks. “ Are they getting here? Are they going to feel strong?”
At about 1 hour 45 minutes, several students from Wilson cross the finish line. A full hour passes, and Will Taylor from Cardozo crosses the finish line.
As the clock turns to 3:07:08, Forman sees Diamond in the crowd of runners on the course. She is not running fast, but she is running.
“There’s Diamond!” Forman yells. “There’s Diamond!”
She crosses the finish line, and he sprints to greet her. He hugs her: “You did it! You did it!”
Diamond looks up at the crowd of Cardozo supporters surging toward her, pulls away from Forman and walks in the opposite direction.
“Did you love it?” a mentor calls after Diamond.
“No,” says Diamond. “I didn’t love it.”
“I feel good mentally,” Diamond says later, smiling faintly. “Physically, my back hurts. ”
Maybe Teens Run DC has changed her. Maybe a bit. She still isn’t quite sure why she showed up when she did. But, and this seems to occur to her as she speaks, “If I hadn’t, I never would have made it.”
Diamond touches the medal around her neck. She’s in it for real now.
“Why quit after all of this?” she says.
DeNeen Brown is a Washington Post staff writer. She can be reached at browndl@washpost.com
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