At just before 6:30 a.m. — when the marathon was scheduled to begin — the runners stood for the traditional playing of the national anthem.

OK, it wasn’t runners, exactly.

It was a runner. One.

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And the anthem departed from tradition in that the runner’s wife was playing it on her cell phone.

“We need to play the anthem!” she had suddenly decided.

So she whipped out her cellphone and played the anthem, as everyone sang along. 

Then Nathan Franklin headed out of the cove — on his 26th birthday, two days after being laid off from his job — to run 26.2 miles through East Memphis alone.

“It’s not exactly how I planned it,” he said. “But I wasn’t going to give up.”

Which is the right spirit for these times, isn’t it? When nothing is how any of us planned? 

Graduations and weddings aren’t proceeding the way we planned them. School years and careers have been derailed.

So I offer the story of Franklin, 26, as evidence that old plans can be replaced by new plans — and that those new plans can sometimes be as rewarding as the old.

“I actually started training for the marathon on the same day I started my new job,” Franklin said. “It was February 3. I thought it would be good to have something going on besides work so I wouldn’t get so obsessed with my job.”

Franklin wasn’t starting training from scratch, exactly. He’s been a regular participant in the Turkey Trot at Audubon Park. In the last year — inspired by a book called “Can’t Hurt Me,” by David Goggins, a Navy SEAL — he stretched that to a 10K and then a half-marathon.

But Franklin had never run a full marathon. When he got a job working as a data scientist for a Chicago consulting firm, he decided this would be the time. He even found a marathon — the Illinois Marathon — scheduled for his 26th birthday. 

“It all seemed perfect,” he said. “I signed up. I thought I would be getting comfortable in my new job, running my first marathon and happily settled in life.”

Yeah, well.

You know what happened next.

COVID-19 became our new reality. Franklin and his wife, Margo, decided they could work virtually just as effectively from Memphis as from their cramped Chicago apartment.

“We moved in with my in-laws,” Franklin said. “But I continued to train.”

Then the Illinois Marathon got postponed indefinitely.

“At that point,” said Margo, cheerfully. “I would have given up.”

Franklin hit upon another idea. He would run a marathon anyway. In East Memphis. By himself.

“I had already trained for it,” he said. “I was doing it more as a personal goal than anything else, to prove to myself that this is within my potential, that it is something I can do.”

Franklin plotted the 26.2 mile route on his cell phone. He would leave from his in-laws’ house, run past his parent’s house, run in and around Shelby Farms and end up at his grandmother’s house.

“That’s where we had a lot of celebrations when I was growing up,” he said. “My grandmother just started chemo, so she hasn’t been feeling great lately. It just seemed like a fitting place.”

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Everything was all set. Franklin was tapering his distance in the final days, the way the experts do. And then, Thursday, he got a call from his consulting firm.

“I got laid off,” he said. “I loved the job. I had a great experience there. They just didn’t have as much business as they thought they would have.”

So, no, things were not working out the way Franklin planned them. But what choice is there — for any of us? — but to carry on. 

And so there was Franklin, Saturday morning, heading out for his first marathon on his own. There was no raucous band at the starting line. There were no fans lining the streets to cheer him on.

“I listened to an audio book,” he said.

Oh, yeah? What book?

“Our Mathematical Universe,” he said, which would propel anyone along.

For the last few miles, Franklin switched to “Can’t Hurt Me,” the book by the Navy SEAL. At around 11:30 a.m. — or five hours after he started — he turned down Shady Grove, made a left into his grandmother’s driveway and ran through a homemade banner and an archway of balloons.

Margo, his wife, put a medal around his neck. Friends and family sang “Happy Birthday!” 

“Honestly, I’d rather be with these people than anywhere else in the world,” Franklin said.

To which his people said: “Awwwww.”

There won’t be any official record of Franklin running his first marathon. And now he has to start looking for a job. But in the face of pandemic, the man did what he set out to do. 

“Also,” he said, “I came in first.”

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