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Jumping was pretty easy. Oh, it required work and training, but I enjoyed it. And there were many kinds of jumping. There was broad jumping for distance and high jumping for height. There was even pole-vaulting which required a pole in order to assist one in jumping extremely high.

But I didn't want to try pole-vaulting because of the pole. Why, it seemed to me that one could get attached to the pole as one does to a shot. Now of course, I wasn't in a position to judge, but that was my honest opinion. And so I tried high jumping.

In high jumping, one simply runs to the bar and jumps as high as one can over the bar without knocking it off the stand. Now, it really is simple to jump over the bar. Really! In fact, anyone can do it. The trick comes in jumping higher than three feet. For the higher one jumps, the harder it becomes. And so I began my training to be a high jumper.

I studied the various techniques of jumping, the styles. I practiced each one until I found a method that worked for me. Then I began jumping in earnest.

I practiced every day at jumping and finally I could jump my height and then I could jump a foot higher. But that was my limit. I had succeeded in jumping as high as I could jump. Every meet I would jump and people would cheer and I would feel good for I had jumped my best. I had accomplished it all by myself. But I wasn't getting anywhere.

My running was confined to a short runway from the starting point to the bar. When I completed my jump I landed exactly four feet from the place I jumped from. And then I would get up, climb out of the pit and walk back to my starting point, run down the same runway and land in the same spot. Quite honestly, I was in a rut and I accomplished absolutely nothing. I wasn't going anywhere.

I knew that somewhere there had to be more to my running experience than this. That somehow I was missing what it took to be a runner. There was something else that I was supposed to do. And so I tried broad jumping.