My friend asked if I was interested in training for a marathon.
“Nope, but I’ll do it anyway.”
Was I interested in running a marathon?
Nope.
Why did I respond with that?
I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.
I wanted to conquer that mountain.
I wanted to strike this marathon off my bucket list.
Three of us were planning to run it.
So, I looked up a marathon training guide online.
Three months of consistent, systematic training.
And I trained.
It was winter.
It was cold.
I trained.
And then…
My roommate snapped his ankle on a curb while training.
There is no marathon bucket list item for him.
He’s out.
I kept training.
6-mile runs, 3-mile runs, breaks, 7-mile runs.
My friend told me that a significant goal was to get my time under 4 hours.
I kept training.
My longest training run was approximately 20 miles.
A month before the race, my other friend informed me that she hadn’t been training like she should.
She wasn’t running.
I wasn’t backing out now – this is a bucket list marathon.
I was running the entire 26.2 miles, baby!
I ran it.
With this guy (who had run something like 800+ marathons)
<<<<——————–
My time?
3 hours 58 minutes 27 seconds.
Approximately 2 minutes under my goal.
Boom!
Because I trained well and ate a nice carb-filled meal the night before, I wasn’t even sore after the race!
So, if you have a desire, pick a marathon race.
Not three years later.
Pick one six months out.
Please pick it up now.
Sign up.
Pay.
Put your money out there.
Have a friend sign up.
Nobody you know wants to run?
Put an ad on Craigslist.
Get on the interwebs.
Find a running buddy.
Get accountable.
Find a training regiment and do it.
Train.
Train hard.
And knock it off your bucket list.
When I finished running the race, my friends asked how I liked my first marathon.
I said, “Oh, you mean my first and last? It was all good.”
In 15 years, I haven’t run another marathon.
Although I did train for something bigger.
A trail run that was a 50k.
But that’s another story…
