The love of running (recap of marathon and more)

You don’t have to spend much time with me to know that I have a special place in my heart for running. I think about it almost all the time. I think about being outside. I think about the other people doing the same thing as we run past each other in opposite directions and wonder what they’re life journey looks like. When I am not running and I see someone who is, you can almost always hear me send up a little cheer in the form of “Run it out” or “Get after it”…

I’ll be the first to tell you:

Running literally saved my life.

When I started losing weight and needing to move my body more, I choose to do what many people do and worked out at home. I was too embarrassed to go to a gym and running was not even a thought in my head. I stepped on and off that damn wii board for hours upon hours and when that got to be easy I turned to the streets and walked my dogs for long periods of time.

I often tell the story about how one morning back in late January of 2010, while walking my dogs, I ran half a block just to see if I could and then promptly threw up in some stranger’s yard because I had pushed too much, too fast.

A few days later I began the couch to 5k program and have never looked back.

Two and a half years later I’ve turned that 1/2 block run into three marathons over a five month period. I’ve turned that “I can’t run for 30 seconds without throwing up” into “I can run for hours and hours (and hours) and do it with a smile on my face”. I turned that “I will never run a 5k, 10k, sprint triathlon, half marathon, 187 mile relay race olympic triathlon, marathon…” into “Let’s see what I can do next (Half Iron Man, Ultra…)“

Over the last two and half years I’ve let go of a lot of things having to do with running. I will never win a race. I will never qualify for the Boston Marathon. I will never win in my age group. I had to let go of worrying about time and grasp on to the fact that running has given me something I spent many years thinking I didn’t deserve:

Life.

If you know me then you know that I will stop and take pictures when I run because it allows me to get out of my head and remain present in my environment. It forces me to focus on what I’m seeing around me instead of focusing on *that* voice that so many of us hear as we run…

I thought about what kind of recap I wanted to do for this third and final marathon for 2012. Did I want to write about how this was physically the toughest of the three and yet I managed to finish five minutes faster than the 2nd marathon three weeks previous and almost eighteen minutes faster than the first marathon five months before? Did I want to write about how I opted for a start time of 7:30 instead of 8:30 because it was strongly suggested to start early if you run a five hour marathon? Did I want to write about how at the half way point I was passed by almost all of the 8:30 starters and came in dead last for my age group?

Instead I’m just posting my pictures.

Because I was out doing what I’ve learned is the most important thing to do while running.

Enjoy it.

 (4:50:53)