Hermes – The Greek messenger god. Known for his sandals with wings that allowed him to fly.
Charlie Crews hates treadmills. They remind him too much of prison.
He's not a born runner. Or at least he never used to run out of anything but necessity. He played sports growing up. Baseball and lacrosse. So he trained with the team and was fast but that was just a side effect of the joy of a great shot, a well executed pass or a stolen base.
When he joined the police force there were PT tests to pass. He had always been fit so he passed but grumbled about the necessity of all the running. He enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow police officers and there was a certain level of that found in the communal bitching about instructors being hard-asses and miles that had to be run.
Then he went to prison. He did sit ups and pushups in his cell when he was confined there. When he wasn't he ran endless circles in the yard. Never going anywhere. The track had been little more than the space where the grass had worn away along the edge of the fence. Like dogs testing the end of a lead when left chained outside, the inmates had worn the grass away under endless footsteps. The track was something less than a quarter mile around but he ran ceaselessly in his worn down prison issue sneakers adding his footsteps to the paths of countless others.
When he got out of prison the first thing he did was buy new clothes. Taylor made contrasting the one size fits most prison uniform. He bought running shoes. Pairs and pairs of them. Running became his meditation. Five, ten, fifteen miles at a clip with only the soothing sound of his feet on the pavement steadily moving him forward. The only thing of importance the moment he was in and putting one step in front of the other. A mental track of the Buddha running along in his head with him. The serenity of the sun on his skin and his own body powering him wherever he wanted to go.
If prison did nothing else it had made Charlie Crews into a runner and he reveled in it.