After last week’s mad dash, I promised myself I wouldn’t be doing any 10-minute sprints from work to the train anymore. So I did a 9-minute sprint. Work ran long, something came across the transom late, blah blah blah. So I got a late start.

Sixteen blocks in nine minutes. Not bloody likely. I’d pretty much given up on the 5:46 by about 39th Street (5:43). Hustle to the platform, I told myself, and maybe it’s late. If not, don’t sweat it–get a well-deserved drink at Two Boots and wait the 24 minutes for the next one.

I sprint into Grand Central and read the departure screen while going at full speed. Track 111. Downstairs. Not a break.

I bolt downstairs, find the track, and hit the ramp. A guy is walking up the ramp, shaking his head. “Missed it,” he said.

The train’s doors were shut.

But then a strange thing happened. The doors magically opened! The man on the ramp ahead of me ran.  So did I. “Hold the door!” I told him.

Didn’t need to. We got on, the doors shut and the train departed.

That happens on the subway, and Lord knows it happens in the movies–I get on, Gwyneth Paltrow is there, I make a joke, she looks up from the Times, we get off in Bronxville and go for a drink, fall in love, etc.

But never on Metro North.