"Life is like a marathon"

When I was in school, my brother and I would sometimes run with a college student who was doing some kind of summer work in a local church. One day he shared with us his observations on how a marathon resembles life. At the first, runners are feeling good, visiting with each other and “kicking up their heels” to some degree. Thus with youth. After a while, they settle down to the long haul of hard running – the “middle age” of the race. Then, as the race winds down, they have to focus on just making it to the end: old age, so to speak. I thought his analogy was fairly apt.