Life is a Marathon

22 year-old Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya won the Chicago Marathon in 2:05:41, the fastest marathon ever recorded on American soil. I was thinking about the feat as I began my walk tonight. Thousands run the marathon every year. Few have covered the more than twenty-six mile distance in one-hundred-twenty-five minutes forty-one seconds – an average of less than five minutes per mile.

I’m too heavy and too old to jog anymore but I can still walk. As I left my house tonight before six, intent on beating the darkness, I thought about the young Kenyan’s feat. My mind, still as nimble as it was at twenty-two, quickly raced to other subjects. My thoughts transformed from running to writing.

The screenplay I am working on, adapted from my book Big Easy, is forty pages too long. I spent much of the day trying to mend the problem with varied success.

It was spitting rain as I commenced my walk tonight. Temperatures have fallen in central Oklahoma recently and we turned on our heaters yesterday. My mind wasn’t on the rain, or the falling temperatures, but Sammy Wanjiru, and which actor should play Lieutenant Tony Nicosia should my book ever result in a movie.

While I will never run a sub-three-hour marathon, I can still walk, and walking- for all you enthusiasts out there - is a great thought catalyst. During my walk, It dawned on me the best person to play Tony Nicosia is John Travolta.

I finished walking in the spitting rain, dreaming of running a world record marathon, and trying to convince Travolta to star in my movie. Hey, maybe I’m a hopeless dreamer, but sometimes dreams are all we have. I also have a feeling 22-year-old Sammy Wanjiru dreamed of running the fastest marathon ever recorded on American soil long before he ever did it.

Louisiana Mystery Writer