This weekend was my one year anniversary of running! It was one year ago that Erik & I were driving across Illinois en route to Wisconsin when, like a bolt of lightning, it hit me. I want to run... I want to run a marathon... I want to run a marathon with my dad! (I think there's a joke in there somewhere about Illinois being so boring that running a marathon sounds like a brilliant idea) The very next morning, I got up and hit the hotel treadmill.. and amazingly I enjoyed it enough to want to keep doing it. When I got back to Kansas City I kept getting up in the mornings and running and running and running... then Bad Ben talked me onto the trails, which got me running even further. I kinda figured that I would train, run the marathon and that would kinda be it... after all I always swore that I would never be a runner.
Growing up crewing for Dad at ultras kinda sucked... my friends would go on cool vacations and we were always going to some random place to get up early to watch Dad run into the woods, then we'd pile into the car, drive for a bit, park and wait for him to run out of the woods, hand him food and drink, change his shoes and socks and watch him run back into the woods, whereupon we would pack up, and repeat for 30 hours or worse for 6 days (that race is an entire blog post in itself). Yippee!! Needless to say running wasn't high on my to-do list.. I did a few 5ks and 10ks when I was young but that was the extent of it. So I never meant to fall in love with running.. but somehow I did, I have found an amazing amount of joy in the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other. It turned out that Dad gave me some of his distance running DNA. I knocked out the marathon at the end of April, and kept going, 35 miler, 50K, and now in October a 50 miler.
It has been such an enjoyable year, I have gotten to know some of the best people, run some amazing trails and re discovered a childish joy in running and playing in the mud. I'm so grateful to that bolt out of the blue from 1 year ago.. god, fate, nature, whatever it was.. I'm so very, very grateful.
6 comments:
Couch to 50 miles in one year. WTG! Plus, I see that feb 7 date on your calender....you'll do great.
We'll be racing together a few times in the next few weeks. I'll see you at Flat Rock and at Heartland.
Congratulations on your 1 year anniversary!
You have rocked your first year girlie!
Best of luck this weekend. I wanted to be there-but can't.
Happy Anniversary! You are amazing.
Congratulations. This is a "life marker" worth celebrating!
You're a beast going for the 50 miler in one year.
That stuff about crewing for your dad sounds pretty funny.
congrats! okay, i'm late.
anyway, i hope parents who read this will remember this post when they wonder if they mean anything to their teenage kids. see? kids do listen. they just take a while to let the influence kick in.
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