In seventh grade I had hated gym. In eighth grade I was required to take it only a half year. And so I chose it for the second half. But by then I liked it so much that I signed up for a full year in ninth grade. I even signed up to take summer school gym. That summer, my sister Vera and I took the summer school gym class, which was so intense that we literally spent hours in the gym the whole morning. Yet, it was more relaxed, we didn't have to wear uniforms, or "gym suits" and the coaches gave out pop and played rock music over the gym PA system. I concentrated mostly on volleyball, but there wasn't much running. When the summer school gym ended in early July, Vera and I decided to go running. We got up at 5:00 one morning. To us it was very early. We stretched out on the living room floor, we kept thinking and saying that maybe we shouldn't go. As we limbered up our muscles and our joints we kept saying, "Maybe we shouldn't go." Finally we got out. We ran to our old elementary school and ran around the playground. We ran around all the ball diamonds and all the bases. Then we ran to a street farther east of us called 13th East and ran along it for a while. After that we returned home, thinking that we had been gone a long time. We found that only twenty minutes had elapsed, but it was our first time out so we were excited anyway. We ran together a few times after that, but except for a few more times, we had our separate agendas for running. Vera went on to absolutely shatter the Granite School District record in the 880 yard run when she was in eighth grade. We ran my second and Vera’s first marathon together. Today, even more than twenty years later Vera runs marathons, ultra marathons, and super deluxe triathalons. And it all started with that simple run on an early July morning in 1976.
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