Run for Home

Today is the day my youngest brother (almost typed baby brother out of force of habit-a habit that hasn't been accurate or a habit in half a lifetime, mine, or three quarters of one, his) is in the New Jersey Marathon. He took up distance running it seems to me less than eighteen months ago and by now has probably covered enough distance in practices and competitions to be nearly to the Golden Gate Bridge.

I know and have known a few people who are distance runners-thank goodness it's not contagious as my insurance doesn't cover vaccinations against it. Pat K from Germany, 'die Grosse Patrick,' as our son, Pat, used to call him, decided to take part in a triathlon after having covered one for a TV sports broadcast.

Sally F did the USMC marathon and more recently Tough Mudder and Joe B and James B (no relation) together with Jim McG run and bicycle at least five days a week (multiple miles at a time). I admire the determination and the stick-to-it tiveness such discipline takes and make myself scarce (a major effort considering my age and infirmities) whenever the word and volunteer surfaces in the conversation.

In high school every summer I used to run the perimeter of Harvey's Lake, Pennsylvania where our parents had a summer home. It wasn't that many miles but it was enough to convince me whoever invented a bicycle deserved whatever Noble Prizes we hadn't already given to whomever invented the automobile.

I think I know my brother well enough to know there will not today, nor have there been at any time in the course of his training, be a moment where he wonders why the heqq he is doing this. From the time he was able to form facial expressions, his have almost always been of the squared jaw, set in neither a smile nor a frown but more of an 'let's do this' indication. And  I suspect today as he, along with thousands of other runners launches and lunges along, he will early on find his pace and with an ease that belies how hard and how much work is involved in so doing, maintain it, uninterrupted, through to the finish. Just the way he lives.
-bill kenny