Life Lessons In a Foot-Race

The Seattle Marathon,

First things first. I ran the half marathon, finished, and lived to blog about it.

As you may recall, Meg came to me a few weeks ago and asked if I wanted to run the Seattle half marathon with her. I'm not a runner, but I just figured it was a good to challenge my over forty carcass to do something outrageously hard every once-in-awhile, so I said yes. I tried to train some, but for reasons I won't go into I was not as prepared as I should have been when I walked through the downtown predawn toward the starting line this morning.

There was a record turnout this year and I began the run through the skyscrapers of Seattle in a pulsing mass of people dressed in micro-fiber and expensive shoes. Surprisingly running across downtown wasn't that hard and the first three or so miles felt pretty good. There

really is something about the energy of a crowd all heading for one goal that enables you to perform at your best.

I won't give you the blow-by-blow but suffice it to say that easy-peasy feeling soon gave way to fatigue, numbness, and eventually downright pain before I crossed the finish line. But along the way I learned some lessons and that's what this post is about.

All along the route I was thinking about all the proverbs and metaphors I've heard through my life about how life is a journey and the hardest, longest journeys all begin and end with one step - all you have to do is keep stepping between the beginning and end.

You know it really did get hard out there. I've never run a half marathon before and sometimes when I passed a mile marker I was a little discouraged to see that I hadn't made more progress. Failure was always an option for some. There were vans and medical tents to take care of those who felt they just couldn't go on and I could have just decided it was too hard, cited several reasonable excuses and stopped stepping - but I didn't. Instead I finished and in finishing I learned something that applies to life.

I wasn't first by a long shot. In fact I was pretty slow by comparison to several hundred other runners including Meg who, at 2:20:00, finished about an hour ahead of me.

That didn't matter. As long as I was willing to keep taking steps I was in the race and had a good chance of reaching my goal. In some ways I was my own umpire. Nobody was going to call me out if I didn't do it to myself. It was hard. It took a long time. But I kept stepping and I have my goal. My medal says so - "Seattle Marathon 2007 Finisher"

I think as soon as I heal from the waist down it's time to begin training for next year. This finishing thing's addictive.

Cheers,

Dave

Roadrunner!

Marathon Man

Here I am getting some new wheels for the Seattle Marathon this Sunday. I let myself get talked into doing the half marathon and I'm determined to finish even if it finishes me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the best shape of my life, I'm just not a runner -  not my sport. It is a great excuse to go shopping for some much-needed workout clothes though. Anyway we'll just have to wait and see how the race goes Sunday. I'm laying out my iPod playlist for maximum motivational impact and I'll give all I've got.

Later,

Dave