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I had a dream the other night that provided a glimpse into the future of running. Here is what will happen:

I was driving up to the 48th running of the Maple Leaf Half Marathon at the Merck Forest trailhead and having a conversation with my grandson.

"Gee, grandpa, I really like going to these races. It's so much fun running on the trails with the other kids in the fun runs and then watching everyone run off into the woods. Have you been running in these races for a long time?"

"Oh yes, Monroe" (as with most runners, named after a favorite trail run - his cousin is named Dipsea) "but you know, in the old days many of these races were actually run on roads instead of trails. Some right on these very roads we're driving on now!"

"Zowee!" (who knows why some of these expressions come back in vogue), wasn't that boring and dangerous?"

"It sure was, but that was what people had always done, so it took some maturing of the human intellect before we realized that trail running was inherently superior."

"Huh?"

"We were dumb back then."

"Oh, well, I'm sure glad you got smarter."

"Me, too!"

"Grandpa?"

"Yes?"

"Are there any of those weird road races still anywhere in the world?" "Funny you should ask; there are very few, but I just got an application for one in the mail today."

"Really! Wow, can I see it?"

"Sure, here it is."

"The Reverend Johnny 5K. Holy smokes! Way down in Florida at the Restful Acres Retirement Village. It says, 'Run entirely on wide, flat, paved roadways - no bumps, no hills, no roots, no rocks.' Totally weird. You know anybody who's going?"

"Oh, grandma and I will probably go down for it; we know the race director. He's a nice guy, even if he's a bit old-fashioned in his thoughts about running. Funny thing is he used to live way up in the hills in Sandgate. Great trails all around him, but he hurt his knee once and blamed it on a trail run. Never set foot in the woods again and moved to Florida where there's lot and lots of roads."

"Gee, that's sad."

"Not really, he seems happy there. He and some other guys go out every day with their titanium racing walkers and scamper around a 5K loop. It's really fun to watch. You should see them doing their 400 meter intervals on Wednesday nights!"

"Still, it's better for us to just stay on the trails with everyone else, right?"

"That's right, we just have to hope our races don't get too crowded like the Nipmuck Marathon in Connecticut. With 28,000 runners last year it's no wonder it put the old New York City Road Marathon out of business, but those trails are kind of narrow!"

"Well, I'm glad I'm a trail runner!"

"That's my boy!"

by Jim Sullivan

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