running: the dawn

I just removed the last bit of blister induced dead skin from my feet.  The final tangible reminder of my recent 26.2 jaunt.  The physical healing is almost complete, meanwhile the emotional and mental muscles could still use a good stretch.  As I clipped away the last bit of the old skin off to give room for the new skin to grow I decided that this would be the last day that I rehash my marathon.  After today, it’s time to move on to the next challenge.

I have a really difficult time rejoicing over victories.  In the hours and days after Grand Rapids, I had a struggled to reply when people would say to me, “How excited are you?” and “I bet you’re on cloud 9!” and “Congratulations!”  I would immediately down play the whole ordeal and undermine my accomplishment with responses like, “Yea, I just barely squeaked by,” or “I don’t know how I did that!”  But now, with over a week between me and the race, I have started to feel more celebratory.  This perspective has come for two main reasons:

1. This weekend I saw my high school PE teacher Mrs. M.  She’s been keeping up with my running journey on facebook and she was SO thrilled with my time at the marathon.  She then decided to look up my fastest mile time from high school.  Now, do not be fooled.  I was NOT a runner in high school.  I detested the mile run that we had to do at the beginning of the school year.  It was pure evil.  And I’m pretty sure that I complained about it like it was my own personal death march.  We got graded on our speed as it compared to the “Presidential Fitness” test.  One year she actually had the boys come and run with some of us girls to “motivate” us to get a better grade.  I was so angry that I had to run with one of the fastest guys with him yelling at me to “run faster!”  However, it worked and I got my fastest mile that day: 8:07.  HA!  That’s how fast I ran mile 26 of my marathon!!!  Talk about growth!
2. Last year, in September I returned to running after taking 2 years off.  It was hard and not pretty.  I had a really rough time finding motivation to get out there and log the miles.  So my running sister Andi and I decided to “challenge” each other through the Nike+ website.  The first challenge was to see who could run more miles in 30 days.  She won that one (I blame the time difference, since she could wait until I went to sleep on the east coast and then go run just enough to beat me, since she lived on the west coast, but whatever ).  Then we decided to do a speed challenge: who could run a faster 2 miles.  It was SOOOO hard!  I would go out every afternoon and find the flattest route and sprint for all I was worth for two miles.  My fastest time–the time that won?  17:05.  Which breaks down to 8:33 per mile.  That was me running all out for two miles.  Exactly 8 seconds per mile SLOWER than my average pace for 26.2 miles!

I may have dreamed about running Boston “someday” when I first started running 6 years ago.  But that dream seemed like it was made out of fairies and pixie dust.  Especially since I  ran 11+ minute miles for my first half marathon.  And when I take a moment and really think about how far I’ve come, I realize that this accomplishment deserves little moment of celebration.  I hope that when my time comes and I’m standing at the starting line of the Boston Marathon I take a moment and think about all the time I thought it was impossible.  Think about all the struggles I had along the way and soak in every second of that race.

Over the years I’ve built up emotional callouses.  Thickened my skin so that I wouldn’t get hurt if I fail.  My callouses protect me and keep me from unnecessary pain.  But this time?  I didn’t fail.  My thick skin just caused a blister full of pent up excitement, expectation, joy, and accomplishment.  Now, with the new skin on my toes, there is also the fresh new skin of a whole new me.  A me that I believe in.  A me that goes after the impossible goal.  A me that, in 174 days, will run the Boston Marathon.

**ok…now I can actually move on and start writing about something and/or everything else!**