A ten-kilometer and a two-mile road race highlight the annual St. Patrick's Day shenanigans in Aggieville every year. It's our unofficial spring kickoff, a reminder that the time to plant onions and potatoes has arrived. On Thursday, without any suggestion from anyone in the household, Taylor decided he wanted to run in the two-mile event. Although he had never run in an organized event before, and although (to the best of my knowledge) he'd never run this distance before without resting, Taylor has shown himself over his few (ten) years to be a good judge of his own abilities, so we preregistered him, paying the modest entry fee that entitled him to a spot in the field, a commemorative T-shirt, a pin-on number, and (after the race) a grilled burger. And then we wondered whether he'd stick to his decision.

We should have known better.

He had little time to prepare for the race, but the speed and cunning that has enabled him to avoid extinction at the hands of his older siblings served him well on Saturday. The start of the race, he says, was a little intimidating, as well it might be when your 10-year-old body is surrounded by 294 other teeming bodies, most of them larger than yours. For a moment at the start of the race, he was worried that he might be trampled, but when he realized that the pack was going to be there for a while just running in place as the folks who had bullied their way to the front (who could actually see the starting line) peeled off from the pack at a run, he became peeved that they were wasting his time and his fame. It seemed to him that he ran in place back in the pack well behind the starting line for thirty seconds; in fact, he probably lost only ten seconds.

When the pack began to move westward and then south from the starting line, I walked two blocks south to the edge of City Park where I would be able to sight Taylor intermittently. I glimpsed his bobbing head at a great distance twice, I think, once on the west side as the swarm entered the park, and again on the east side after the pack had become strung out along the path in a single file and he had moved closer to the front (though probably already over a minute behind the eventual first finisher). Finally, just past the midway point, this lighter-than-air, bird-boned boy flew just past me, his hair flying and a smile lighting his way.

His time at the midpoint was 7:13, he says. He wouldn't have checked his watch because he probably didn't know how far a mile is until this race, but a race marshal was hollering out the times as runners passed. By that time, he was still running free and easy, and the chorus to the song "The Way" by Fastball was looping continuously through his head, providing the tempo for his steps. After he passed my position and while he made the last half-circuit of City Park, I sauntered toward the finish line.

His official time of 14:14 was good enough to earn him a 6th-place ribbon in his age bracket (10-13). Overall, he placed 40th out of 295 runners, and was the 38th man. I've pored over the race results and have continued to marvel at his performance, drawing comparisons and conclusions that cause a dad's pride to swell but that induce boredom in a neighbor, so I'll end this account by noting that he ran two miles in the time it takes me to walk one briskly.

Good job, kiddo.

Reading: "The Knight's Tale"