arc of time

i’m sitting in a hotel room in san diego and there are about 10 hours to go before the curtain comes up on marathon number six. i’m listening to where the streets have no names, which is, and always will be my marathon song.

i’ve been thinking about the other five. vegas, 2006. georgia, 2007. vermont, 2007. georgia, 2009. marine corps, 2009. each one has its own story, each had its own reason for calling me to the starting line. every training season was different, some more challenging than others, but at the heart of every one is love. love for my sport, love for the people i trained with, love for the ground and love for myself.

this year is the first time i have ever really understood that thought. and i think that is what makes tomorrow so exciting. i could set a personal record tomorrow. i’m well trained, the course is fast and the weather is going to be perfect. i probably weigh 20 pounds less than i have for any other marathon.

then again i may not.

and it doesn’t really matter.

because tomorrow i run for the love of it. and when you do that, the run is all that matters.

i can’t wait.

6 days away from marathon number 6. i ran around 7 miles yesterday; the last long run of the season. the next run longer than just a few miles will be 26.2 in san diego.

the truth is i am primed. i am in better shape than i ever have been for in my life, and QED for any of my other marathons. i weigh less, have run longer and harder and am stronger than i have ever been.

this should be a really good race. i don’t know, nor really care how fast i am going to run it. my best time, achieved at the 2009 ing georgia marathon, is just over four hours and 41 minutes. do i think i can beat that? probably. it’s not really my goal though.

deep down inside, my goal is really to finish a lot stronger. i have always struggled in the final miles. i know they are tough no matter what, but i think i can do better. and that is my real goal. running strong through the tape.

we’ll see if it happens.

i am sure primed for it though.

one of the aspects of running with team in training that i love the most is getting to see people accomplish things for the first time. after five marathons and thousands of miles logged at every distance up to 26.2, this partly helps keep the experience fresh for me.

yesterday our usual group training session was cancelled due to some pretty vicious t’storms that moved into atlanta early saturday morning. well the training must go on either way, so around 0900 i met up with two of the girls i am mentoring for the san diego rock ‘n roll marathon and we did our 14 together (i ended up doing about 15.)

one of the girls mapped the course and it ended up being pretty aggressive with a lot of uphills, some steep and short, some long and gradual, some long and steep ala briarcliff north of north decatur. it was a great run, and much like my 14 miler i did last weekend in goodlettesville, tn, i felt like i was gliding over most of it.

but the thing that made it special was sticking with them through the 14 miles. we reached a point in the run – 12 miles for one of them and 13.1 miles for the other – where we were beyond anything they had ever run before. and that was pretty special.

i love seeing the excitement on someone’s face when they go for a long distance like that and achieve it. it’s pretty amazing and one of the reasons i keep doing tnt.

p.s. – i still need $$ for the san diego marathon so if you are so inclined to support me, you can jump over here and make a donation to the leukemia society

it’s about time for a training update for the san diego marathon. honestly, i can’t even call it training yet. someone asked me yesterday how the training was going and my basic answer was, ‘it’s fine. doesn’t feel like traning yet. talk to me when we get above 12.”

our group training session was 7 miles last weekend, and 8 this. and that’s just how it is going this year. runs that long don’t even feel like runs. something has clicked in my mind now and even runs almost two hours long just don’t seem to be much of an issue anymore.

this is great and i am loving every minute of it, but it does take some of the shine off of our weekly training runs. it makes them seem almost not worth posting about. what IS worth posting about is my team. so many great people are on our summer team raising money for the leukemia and lymphoma society. any while these distances don’t rile me up anymore, there are so many people on our team for whom this is the longest they have ever run.

it usually happens around 6 miles. people who have run up to a 10k start passing their personal bests for distance. and i love that. i love running alongside people who are experiencing the joy of mileage for the first time. it’s one of the things i absolutely love about doing team in training.

i am going to try to keep up the posting though. i am having a blast this season and i want to keep writing about it. just need to keep on keepin’ on.

speaking of which, i would love a donation if you feel so inclined. you can always do that right here at my tnt fundraising page.

at team in training, georgia chapter we had our kickoff for the summer season last night. kickoff is something i love. it’s just too much to see the mixture of people. some are nervous about running 26.2 or 13.1. some are nervous about raising money for a cure. some are cocky and know they are going to do it. and of course, there are the returning members of the tnt family, for whom the kickoff is like a reunion.

our georgia chapter run coach tommy owens always talks about a hero being an “ordinary person doing something extraordinary.” one of the reasons i love kickoff is that i see ordinary people beginning the journey of doing something extraordinary.

becoming a marathoner was one of the most extraordinary things i have ever done. doing it and raising money for a cure took *that* to another level.

as i greeted each person and i saw the ones showing up to do the san diego marathon, i thought to myself, in june, i will cross the finish line with these people. we will all share an extraordinary moment, and right now they don’t even understand how amazing it will be.

in 5 months they will though. and i will have helped get them there. and so will you. all of you who have or will support me through encouragement, donations and cheering are supporting them to.

so how about it. i can think of two ways to help. first, you can donate in support of me right here. or second, have you ever actually thought about doing it? my friends at tnt are offering a pretty sweet deal for people i refer (just to note, i am not getting anything out of this, other than the satisfaction of knowing that you are going to love me for it.) check out the details here.

let’s do this, san diego.

i still don’t have a good graphic to use for the 2010 san diego marathon. i may in the end just use the team in training logo, but not quite sure yet. this season i am ‘mentoring’ for team in training. i am pretty excited about this. it means i will get a group of runners, many of them who have never run a marathon before, and i will help guide them through their training and fundraising as we go through the season and get toward the starting line.

mentors were a huge part of my success with the program last year, and it is pretty cool to have been selected to help out with the san diego team in training group in this way.

we are starting our training this coming saturday so things have been ramping up for sure. our big rah-rah kickoff meeting is tuesday, and the of course the big group training session saturday morning.

i spoke for a few minutes yesterday at an informational meeting. i talked about being successful raising money for the leukemia society as part of the program. it is definitely a challenging thing to wrap your mind around when you consider doing tnt. i know for me at least, i had no issues with the training, having climbed the ladder to 26.2 multiple times. the fundraising, not so much.

anyway, get ready for maps, and run reports and all the fun stuff that shows up on this blog when i start training for a marathon.

oh and speaking of fundraising, my fundraising page is up now, so how about stopping by and donating $10?

i have been lazy.

there is just no way around that. after i finished the marine corps marathon back in october, i just hung my shoes up. i didn’t mean to. i meant to do some recovery runs and then run a trail 15k. but instead, day after day, my shoes just sat, unused. part of it was just needing some time off and having a very busy schedule. part of it was the law of inertia, basically once i didn’t do the first run it got easier and easier not to do them. and of course i struggle with running when i don’t have anything to train for.

but now i do. even though our official season hasn’t started, i feel like i need to get myself into good running shape to be a mentor for the summer season for the 2010 san diego rock ‘n roll marathon with team in training.

so i hit the treadmill for a quick three mile run just to see how my stamina and muscles were holding up after basically six weeks off. and shockingly all good. the run was actually very easy. so i will put myself back on a four-day-a-week schedule 12-20 miles a week and just get myself ready for the training season.

by the way, if you have thought about running a 26.2 or a 13.1 why not check out tnt for the san diego marathon. it’s a really low fundraising minimum that is more than do-able and you get to run with me. check out an info meeting (schedule here) or drop me an email.