On the run

My husband completed his second Indianapolis Marathon/Half-Marathon (he did the half) yesterday at Ft. benjamin Harrison, which is a beautiful place to run this time of year. The Marathon/Half-Marathon is very hilly, but runners are compensated for their efforts by the sight of all the gorgeous trees along Fall Creek Boulevard. My husband bettered his time from last year a little bit, which was a very happy thing. Congratulations, honey!

My friend Michelle also ran the Indianapolis Marathon 5K event yesterday and stood at the finish line waiting for various people to come across so that she could cheer them on, my husband being one of them, as well as some people from our church and members of the group she ran with. She told me yesterday afternoon after Mass that she ran the 5K in the same amount of time that she used to run that same distance about fifteen years ago, so good goin', girlfriend!

Meelyn and Kieren ran the Lungs for Life 5K in downtown Indianapolis at the IUPUI campus on Saturday, September 27 and did very well there. Kieren, who runs cross country for his school's team, is over six feet tall now, most of it legs. So he was able to speed Meelyn along quite nicely: his own personal time was about fifteen minutes slower that he could have run it, but Meelyn took about five minutes off her own time.

We all traveled together to the Lungs for Life event, which, to be honest, is not very well organized, but in our family, my brother and I had both grandmothers die very young of lung-related illnesses: Our maternal grandmother died of the complications of emphysema and chronic bronchitis at age 54 and our paternal grandmother died of lung cancer at age 63. Both were very heavy smokers, and neither got the chance to meet their beautiful and loving-hearted great-grandchildren.

One of the parts of the event not being well organized became most apparent when Pat, Aisling and I were standing near the finish line waiting for Meelyn and Kieren to come along and we realized that there were families pushing strollers and pulling big plastic wagons full of preschoolers, as well as people in wheelchairs rolling across and one elderly lady with a walker.

Pat and I looked at each other. "What's going on here?" he asked me. "Did they decide to stop running and maybe, I don't know, think that it would be a good idea to crawl?"

I was mystified as I watched the little elderly lady with the walker pump the air with her fist as she crossed the finish line. "Do you think one of them got hurt?" I said uncertainly.

"No, look, here they come," said Aisling, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand and pointing down the street. And indeed, there they were, Meelyn doggedly chugging along and Kieren loping with that easy grace that comes so easy to teenage boys, them with their untapped reservoirs of strength and energy.

The two teens crossed the finish line and joined me, Pat and Aisling, where they told us that the race's course was not very well marked and they'd made a mistake somewhere and found themselves cruising by people who were on the one mile Family Fun Walk.