Rebecca Runs by runforeternity

Well, the official training season has begun, if you're following an 18-week training plan like I am.  I've been putting in lots of base miles, so today just felt good to run my first three "official" miles of training.  Kind of like last year after all the training, and I was tired of waiting to START the race, tired of tapering.  I was getting tired of saying "official training starts January 14th." Now it's training time.

I never thought I'd want to run a marathon.  After my first half marathon in 2006, I was never more certain of anything than the fact that I DIDN'T ever want to run a full marathon.  And I said so.  To everyone.  But at some time during late '06, I started thinking about it.  Since I'm Christian, I like to think that God planted the goal of running a full marathon in me.  So He and I had a lot of deep conversations during miles 23-25 in the Cleveland Marathon last year.  They weren't all like "Dear Lord, thank you for giving me this goal, and thank you for sticking by me." It was more like "Dear Lord, why did you give me this hair-brained idea? I'm 40 years old.  Are you crazy? Are you sure you're the sovereign Lord of all the Earth? I'm hurtin' here.  You gotta send somethin'.  Like an angel, or a miracle or something.  I'm going to barf up my Shot Blocks."  But sure enough, He did stick by me.  (Not that I ever doubted it.  Really.) He gave me a sense of humor and appreciation and PURE ACCOMPLISHMENT like I've only experienced a couple of other times in my whole life.  After I gave birth, I was SO OVER THE MOON with the ability of my body to do what it had just done.  And my first marathon was not much different.  I felt so incredibly accomplshed to have run 26.2 miles.  Did you know that only 1% of the population in the U.S. will ever do this? It's heady. 

So anyway, good for all of us.  Train hard. And have fun. And ice your sore muscles and talk with other runners and get encouragement where you can.  This is gonna be a great race.