Runners are friendly, supportive people. We share the same experience, whether over 3 hours or 6 hours. It is hard. At the race Sunday in my starting corral I met a woman from Washington state who runs for her daughter who died 4 years ago at age 14. This Mom has run dozens and dozens of races in her daughter's memory to publicize the charity she started. She showed me photos of all of her race medals. She is truly amazing. The charity is BooksFromBug.org Check it out.
I've been reviewing my experiences over the past few months of training to determine what, if anything, I learned. Running is mostly mental. You are going to get tired. You do it anyway, any which way you can. It is a metaphor for living a life. Others have said it all so much better than I ever could, though.........
"It's important to know that at the end of the day it's not the medals you remember. What you remember is the process--what you learn about yourself by challenging yourself, the experiences you share with other people, the honesty the training demands--those are things nobody can take away from you whether you finish twelfth or you're an Olympic Champion."---Silken Laumann, Canadian Olympian
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face...You must do the thing which you think you cannot." Eleanor Roosevelt
"A man can live his entire life without knowing whether or not he is a coward." John Berryman
"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things." Leonardo Da Vinci
Slow runners make fast runners look good. You're Welcome.
At mile 20 I thought I was dead.
At mile 22 I wished I was dead.
At mile 24 I knew I was dead.
At mile 26.2 I realized I had become too tough to kill.
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