Taylor ran in the St. Pat's day two-mile run for the first time last year when he was ten, finishing in the ribbons but just out of the medals in his age group. He finished well ahead of any other runner his age.

This year, he decided to run again, and undertook a grueling regimen of training to prepare for it: On two days during the week leading up to the race, he scampered around the one-mile perimeter of our city park with a buddy, stopping to visit friends on the way, running backwards for a while, and generally having a gay old time. He barely broke a sweat (well, it was cool here in March) and scarcely elevated either his heart or breathing rates. The kid is an aerobic machine.

On this St. Pat's day, he finished third in his age group (two thirteen-year-old behemoths beat him), winning his first medal.

Success is seductive, isn't it, and apparently takes some planning. When the complete results were posted a few days after the race, he reviewed them and recognized that the two kids who beat him this year would age into a different bracket next year. His hope is to win his bracket next year (when he'll be twelve) and move up into the 10K race the following year (when he's thirteen). I don't think that at my current age I am capable of planning things as well as he does at eleven (witness this ramble); who could have foreseen that last semi-colon, for instance!

After his success in that race, he decided to join a local track club so he could train more seriously with a coach (I'm not kidding). Until school let out, he attended practices several weekday afternoons after school at the Cico Park stadium, and when school let out for the summer, he attended practices in the morning.

So far he has won every race he has run from 1500 to 3000 meters. The brackets in this format are not age ranges but single ages. At eleven, he's now a sub-midget. His times are not record times (in fact some national age-group records are significantly faster than his times), but so far he's always run well enough to dust the competition on the track.

The only track event in which he hasn't finished first was a 4X400 relay at the state meet in which he subbed for another kid who couldn't attend that weekend. In that race, he kept pace with the leaders for the first 200 meters of the staggered start, and then at the beginning of the second turn he slowed gently into his 1500-meter pace and glided into the finish of his leg (he led off) in the middle of the pack. Still, his team did well enough to qualify for the regional meet in Missouri. (The relay team members chose not to compete there--too many vacations.)

How far will he go with running? I don't know. Tedium has already become a factor as it did when I was a kid training and competing as a swimmer, so I appreciate his concern. He reports that he prefers cross-country or road races because at least the scenery changes. He has said that he rehearses the multiplication tables in his head (ho hum) or listens to the music in his head (better) when running around the oval, because otherwise there's little else to do. So, we'll see. I think that at least he'll run the St. Pat's road race next year. He runs easily, well, and tirelessly, but the racing must remain fun for him if he's to continue, and he can make that choice himself.

The racing season is over now, and other interests vie for his attention and effort, wheedling the cash for a new Trek bicycle out of a grandmother, for instance, or training for the tour du fronce, or camping or fishing or hanging out with his llama buddies at the lake. Life is good, and horizons are clear and wide and promising.