running: the dawn

I’m not sure exactly when I became a person who enjoys watching marathons…. I mean, I know they aren’t terribly exciting.  There aren’t points or half time.  There aren’t hotdogs for sale or mascots pumping up the crowd.  There’s just a whole bunch of people running along the road.

I did watch the entire Boston Marathon last April on my computer.  Actually I watched it twice.  Since I was streaming it, I could rewind it back to the beginning and watch it all again.  Then I watched the Chicago Marathon a week before my race.  While I didn’t love the commentators for that race it was still so exciting.

Today, I watched the live streaming Marine Corp Marathon.  Now…just a note.  This was not a televised marathon.  There wasn’t a huge panel of elite runners and I’m pretty sure not many other people cared that much about it.  In fact, the “stream” was completely silent and it just alternated back and forth from the media truck feed, to the helicopters, to some stationary cameras.  But I did watch all 2.5 hours of it.  And I loved it!

Then, this afternoon I was watching football and my heart skipped a beat when a commercial came on announcing that next week’s New York Marathon will be live on TV.  I actually feel giddy that I get to watch it.  I put it on my calendar and am going to get a text message wake up call so that I will be ready for the start.

Its a sickness, really.

In other news, my running hiatus is officially over.  I went for a quick 4ish miles–at least I think…there was no garmin.  It was cool.  It was sunny.  It felt great.  Welcome back dear friend.  I don’t really have a plan for the next few weeks when it comes to running.  I want to slowly build my miles up to be ready for training, but that won’t be for 5 or 6 weeks.  Not sure how I’ll do without a formal plan.  It’s been almost a year since I was just running to run, without a training plan.  We’ll see….