A dock ran out into the sound just behind the beach house where the children played and swam and each day chased the lizards from the worn planks that grew hot long before the sun was fully up in the midday sky.  It was midsummer and other fathers drank and played cards while their children napped in the afternoon, but I mixed a bottle of Gatorade Endurance and sprayed Bullfrog on my back and shoulders and began my run.  It was a cheerful beach town and people waved and said hello as I ran along the road on my way to the beach where I would run to the pier and back.  It was a windy day and the ocean was choppy like it is in The Gulf Stream painting by Winslow Homer minus the sharks though I knew they were really there because I had seen them before.  The soft sand worked my calves too much so I ran closer to the ocean where the sand was firm.  Still, the heat and the sand and the wind made the run seem harder than it should have been for that distance.  It felt good and I ran past the pier without caring that I didn't have enough Gatorade to run this far.