The odds are very high that unless you live in the Upper Midwest (motto: "You're Almost In Canada!"), you don't care a lot about Fargo, N.D.

That's OK. I wouldn't expect you to care. I do not expect you to start caring.

It is a dusty nowhere town that most people associate with the movie of the same name (which did not actually take place there, except for one scene) or a bank. But for those of us who at one time or another roamed her usually ice-covered streets, it holds mysterious sway.

"You'll be back," Adam Pemble told me seven years ago. "Everybody comes back to Fargo."

He said it with a sort of undertaker's tone, as if the town is an inevitability -- you can try to escape, but its farmhand talons will reach across the plains and rivers and mountains and pull you back eventually. It is useless to resist.

As it turns out, Adam was right. This May, exactly seven years after fleeing the city that refers to itself as "Gateway to the West" (did no one tell them about St. Louis?), I will be returning to my old college town. My wife and I are taking part in one of the races connected to the Fargo Marathon.

Fargo's not a very big place, so a marathon there means running through town twice and then jogging over the border to Minnesota for a while. Putting a run through Minnesota territory at the end of the race gives the runners something to look forward to.

Keen readers will have picked up on my phrasing trickery when I say that "my wife and I are taking part in one of the races connected to the" marathon. We are not actually running the marathon. We are running the half-marathon.

It's kind of a sad little act, running a half-marathon. It's a long enough race to be excruciatingly painful, but not long enough to be impressive to others. No one sings the praises of the half-marathoner. Any gratification for the event comes solely from within.

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Life is often like that. It is full of victories and accomplishments that no one else cares about. My life is like that, especially. I speak fluent Welsh, but do you care? Of course you don't. I made a really good cup of tea this morning, but are you happy for me? Not so much.

Still, there's something beautiful about it. During my short rugby career I was always struck by the intensity with which so many of the players approached the game. All of the elements of sport were present -- tears and joy, celebration and defeat -- but there was no one there to see it. The sidelines were sparsely populated with other players or players' wives and girlfriends, the majority of whom were not watching the match.

You get more reaction from dropping a plate in a restaurant than you could in scoring a try, the rugby equivalent of a touchdown.

Yet every Saturday, all across America and around the world, amateur players tear up their bodies and souls on pathetic, under-kept patches of grass. They put everything they have into accomplishing something that on Monday morning will mean absolutely nothing to the guys in the office.

Sometimes we can get a little too involved in our personal accomplishments. If you want to get one of my fellow Welsh speakers really, really, really angry, log on to one of their Internet discussion boards and type gibberish -- "Aid laic tw bai y fowyl." Then you can spend the rest of your days watching out for a stale Welsh cake whizzing toward you skull.

When I participate in races, I do my best to not strike up a conversation with the other runners, lest they start in with discussion about training methods and previous times and on and on and on until I am forced to admit that I am only running to validate the beer and Buffalo wings I will consume after the race.

Most people, though, are happy to put so much heart and effort into seemingly insignificant things quietly. It's just one of the treasures of life.

It's appropriate that my wife and I are running a race that no one cares about in a town that no one cares about. When we're dehydrated and exhausted and crippled with pain after running a half-marathon, we will have only the congratulations that come from within.

I think it will be worth it.

Chris Cope is married, with no children. His column appears every other Tuesday.