Taking The Next Step

***if you are new here, and have no idea what this is going to be about you have two intelligent choices:


a) Leave Now.

b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?

the thing about platitudes is that, while they sound pretty catchy, in general, they don't really tell you anything you didn't already know...however, sometimes you just need to hear them anyway. This? Was one of those times...and thankfully, there is no shortage of running axioms, with which to bolster one's spirits. At the end of the day, they pretty much all boil down to one simple fact...anyone who runs? Is a runner.

This would become my mantra, post blister.

As summer turned to fall, and school and sports started back up, I recommitted myself to running. The boy child had twice weekly soccer practice, at a field that was an almost perfect 3 mile distance away. Starting in September, on the nights that he had practice, I would come home from work, get changed, and run to his practice. Some nights, if I was feeling especially ambitious, I would run a few laps around the walking trail that lines the park as well. It felt good to get into a routine, and I enjoyed trying to better my time with each outing. I even added slightly longer runs into my weekends here and there and really, truly started to feel like an actual RUNNER.

Fall slowly turned the corner towards winter though, and soccer season came to an end. Without the scheduled regularity of practice, it was suddenly eleventy billion more times difficult to carve out time to run...what had been 3 times a week suddenly dwindled down to once weekly runs...I was crestfallen, and had no idea how to get my groove back. Where and how would I find the time to run?

It was right around this timeframe that I had expressed my desire to eventually run a marathon to one of my best friends, and had explained that I just didn't know which race I wanted to aspire to. It was at that point that he started trying to sell me on his company sponsored marathon, The Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon .

"Sure" I said..."Sure, I'll come to Minnesota. In October. Right-o..." A short haggling period ensued, and we finally came to the agreement that I would come out and run this marathon if and only if...

a) He ran it with me. (**updated for clarity's sake: This was *my* condition...)

b) He paid for the registration fee. (**this was not so much a condition, but the offer he made to convince me to do it)

...now, in all honesty, I would have done it regardless, but I figured, if he paid the fee, he would be less likely to not do it. I also figured, if he was training for it as well, I would have less temptation to give up...I would owe it to not only myself to follow through, but to him as well...come heck or highwater, this. was. happening.