We just gotta keep running, that is all. Now people are terrorizing one of our most beloved events, the Boston Marathon! This is the ultimate running event. People, regular people who work forty hour weeks, spend hours of preparation time to train for marathons. Most are not paid athletes, they are just people with a dream, who do it for the pure high that only comes from running. I have dreamed of running the Kauai Marathon. From what I've read, it will take about three years to train for it, properly. My family will have to make sacrifices. They will support me, give me encouragement. They may even show up at the finish line. No, there's no may, Javy will be at the finish line. So I can only imagine those last seconds as the runners came down the stretch toward the finish line, their families waiting and cheering. They had just run 26 miles and then......
I've been dealing with terrorist for the past 16 years. My first personal bout with a terrorist was Eric Rudolph. He bombed the abortion clinic in Birmingham in 1998. I was annoyed because the radio stations weren't playing music as I drove to work. They were talking about an incident near UAB, a possible explosion. As I drove over Red Mountain, I could see some smoke over in that area. Little did I know that it would completely turn my naive little world around. People would actually call our tip hotline and say things like they were glad that the police officer got killed. One guy even said that he wished "we" had gotten blown up. I would work 16 hour shifts, only to go home and have nightmares about it.
I do know is that life has to go on. On September 11, 2001, I was at a seminar in Quantico, Virginia. It was a beautiful, crisp, blue sky, kind of a day. Sometime that morning, someone interrupted our seminar and we turned the televisions on and watched with horror. I was terrified, about five months pregnant, I don't think I've ever been so scared and I was hundreds of miles away from my family. Later, that afternoon, a supervisor who had a car drove us off of the base and we drove around the beltway, saw the tail of the plane sticking out of the Pentagon with smoke billowing out of it. It was very surreal, as the bustling capital was completely silent. We drove down to the National Mall, the National Guard trucks were everywhere. But there was one thing that I found extremely comforting and the thought still comforts me. There was a runner, running around the Mall, like nothing had ever happened. A runner has got to run.
I've been dealing with terrorist for the past 16 years. My first personal bout with a terrorist was Eric Rudolph. He bombed the abortion clinic in Birmingham in 1998. I was annoyed because the radio stations weren't playing music as I drove to work. They were talking about an incident near UAB, a possible explosion. As I drove over Red Mountain, I could see some smoke over in that area. Little did I know that it would completely turn my naive little world around. People would actually call our tip hotline and say things like they were glad that the police officer got killed. One guy even said that he wished "we" had gotten blown up. I would work 16 hour shifts, only to go home and have nightmares about it.
I do know is that life has to go on. On September 11, 2001, I was at a seminar in Quantico, Virginia. It was a beautiful, crisp, blue sky, kind of a day. Sometime that morning, someone interrupted our seminar and we turned the televisions on and watched with horror. I was terrified, about five months pregnant, I don't think I've ever been so scared and I was hundreds of miles away from my family. Later, that afternoon, a supervisor who had a car drove us off of the base and we drove around the beltway, saw the tail of the plane sticking out of the Pentagon with smoke billowing out of it. It was very surreal, as the bustling capital was completely silent. We drove down to the National Mall, the National Guard trucks were everywhere. But there was one thing that I found extremely comforting and the thought still comforts me. There was a runner, running around the Mall, like nothing had ever happened. A runner has got to run.
No comments:
Post a Comment