So what prompted me to run a marathon? Good question. I
often ask myself this. J
It was a combination of several things. The need to challenge myself and get
out of the personal rut I felt I was in. The need to accomplish something so
much bigger than I am that it seems completely out of reach. Essentially, the
need to make my mark on the world, to do something unexpected, to do something
no one in my family has ever done before, to not be the same person I have been
for 29 years!
I was teetering on this decision after having dinner with someone I knew in law school who’d trained and run the marathon in six months. (Let it be known that he is in much better shape than I am.) Then, I was listening to K-Love on the radio and the DJ was talking about the K-Love team that had just run the 2012 Chicago Marathon as part of the World Vision team and all the money they had raised for that organization. I strongly believe in what World Vision does. And something about being able to be on that team and make a difference not only in my own life, but also in the lives of the people who will be blessed by the money I could raise, just pushed me over the edge and suddenly I was going to run a marathon. How I was going to do that was still rather TBD, so I decided I had to start telling people I was actually going to do this or I would chicken out and nothing would change in my life.
I was teetering on this decision after having dinner with someone I knew in law school who’d trained and run the marathon in six months. (Let it be known that he is in much better shape than I am.) Then, I was listening to K-Love on the radio and the DJ was talking about the K-Love team that had just run the 2012 Chicago Marathon as part of the World Vision team and all the money they had raised for that organization. I strongly believe in what World Vision does. And something about being able to be on that team and make a difference not only in my own life, but also in the lives of the people who will be blessed by the money I could raise, just pushed me over the edge and suddenly I was going to run a marathon. How I was going to do that was still rather TBD, so I decided I had to start telling people I was actually going to do this or I would chicken out and nothing would change in my life.
Note: I hate telling people I am going to do something and
not following through. It eats at me inside.
So the first thing I did, literally not even twenty minutes
had gone by, was call a bunch of people and tell them what I wanted to do. I
got a ton of encouragement and support but no one wants to run with me *sad*.
Even my best friend, who has trained for a few races - not anything as long as
a marathon - but enough to know what she’s doing, can’t run with me. But when I
called to tell her about this crazy idea of mine, she was super supportive. So,
I forgave her and asked for advice. She recommended a book that she’d used to
train and I bought it on Amazon. The book came and I started reading it and
quickly realized this book was fantastic, but clearly for someone in far better
shape that I was. L
There was no way this could be my first step. And I got discouraged.
(Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone? But I still haven’t picked the book back up yet... I promise it is on my list of things to do.)
Which leads me to “why have four and a half months gone by
before you started training?” question… The discouragement is half of it. The
second half is that I have been sick more this fall and winter than in the past
five years. I swear! It has been every two weeks I’m coming down with something
new until finally I had enough and started taking high quality vitamins. I feel
so much better! Annnnd it’s almost been a month of not being sick *fingers
crossed*.
So time to get serious about this because the year’s
awastin’.
