By Tristan Coates

The Air was hot.

My heart was beating like a drum.

I stood on the bright white start line,

crammed between 10 other runners

like sardines in a can.

Silence traveled through the air.

Then the starter raised his pistol,

BANG!

All of the runners took off.

I sprinted ahead, taking a lead.

I could feel my spikes hitting the ground hard.

I kept running, but I could feel my energy fading.

I was breathing hard, and my mouth was dry.

My legs were getting heavy.

My vision was blurred, but ahead, was the bright finish line.

The last 100 meters.

I sprinted a fast as I could.

The crowd was screaming at the runners.

Victory was in my grasp

And I passed the finish line.

1. My poem is a sense poem

2. I chose to write about this event because track is a big part of my life and i’ve been to a lot of track meets, so describing what it’s like to run at one is easy

3. The tone of my poem is hopeful.

4. The theme of my poem is to never give up.

5. “My heart was beating like a drum.” This is an example of a simile. This adds to the story because it shows how nervous I was before I ran the race.

“crammed between 10 other runners like sardines in a can.” This is another example of a simile. This adds to the tone because it shows all of the other runners and how close together we were.

6. One revision I made was that I added “like sardines in a can” to the sentence “I stood on the bright white start line, crammed between 10 other runners.” I added this because I thought it gave more detail on how close together all of the runners were. Another revision I made was that I added, “I was breathing hard,” in front of “My mouth was dry.” because it added more description to how I felt when I was running.

7. I thought it was pretty easy to read this poem because I have been to plenty track meets over the last few years and I have ran the 400 meter dash at most of them. That makes it really easy to describe how it feels to run one.

8. I’m pretty satisfied with my final draft because I read over it multiple times and it seems good to me.