A Shout Out to Sonar X9 edition of 10 Things: Running

Tomorrow is Armed Forces Day in the U.S., a holiday to honor soldiers serving in our five military branches.  Corpus Christi, Texas will also host the 35th annual Beach to Bay Relay Marathon.  Teams of six runners, in the heat and humidity of the early Texas summer (with a threat of thunderstorms), take to the streets, traveling from North Padre Island, over the John F. Kennedy causeway bridge, through Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, and finishing at Cole Park in downtown Corpus Christi.  Each runner takes a leg of about 4 to 4.5 miles beginning at 7 a.m. and finishing when the last walkers and runners cross the finish line and stumble into line for beer and pizza.  

This is no little deal, my friends.  An astonishing 15,000 runners and walkers from all over the world are participating this year.  Among the runners are Sonar X9 and his team of classmates from school.  Eight fourth-graders (some will do their portions together), nine and ten years old, will run the course, each for the first time.  Am I proud?  Heck yeah!  Am I nervous?  Hell yes.  Ok, I’m actually a little scared.  But good scared, excited scared.  Amazed at the perseverance of these kids.  Hopeful that their hard work the past few months will culminate in a good experience for all of them.  

We asked Sonar X9 what it feels like when he’s running.  He said at some point, it feels like his brain is floating free, like his legs are moving by themselves and that they’ll just keep going and going.  How far will they go?  We don’t know yet.  Hopefully they’ll carry him safely through his 4.4 miles tomorrow.  

In honor of these eight kids with a running bug (and the other nearly 15,000 crazy people who’ll be on the course with them tomorrow), I’ve dredged up an old 10 Things about running.  Cheers!

Make a list 1-10.  Tell me, what are the first 10 Things you think of when I say the word RUNNING? Go!!

[Don’t worry, we’re not running out of room.  Just leaving a little breathing space.]

1.  Speed and exhilaration, thrill and fear (of falling, of hurting, of failing)

2.  Blood pounding

3.  Brain free

4.  Muscles sore, then stronger, with sharp edges.  I aspire to the use of the word “chiseled” in my dreams.

5.  Time.  Must squeeze and lever to make the time. 

6.  Energy.  Too easy to give in to other demands and not run.  But when I do run, there is so much energy and electricity. 

7.  Fleeing.  To escape. 

8.  Approaching.  To speed the arrival and diminish the anticipation. 

9.  Racing.  Myself.  A clock.  Other runners.  The pursuer. 

10.  The electric twitch of muscle fiber as it cools and slows and begins to unwrap and build new edges.  

Where will your list run?