Knowing can be twice the battle

When I was a kid I loved watching GI Joe. Every episode ended with a special message to help you move on to your day, and each message ended with the GI Joe character saying ". . . and Knowing is half the battle." It wasn't until this year's training that I actually think that knowing can make it twice the battle.

About a year ago I was in the middle of my 18 week training for my first marathon. I remember looking ahead to CrazyLegs and wanting to use that as a benchmark for my training. My goal was to run CrazyLegs in 35 minutes, I more or less did it: result (type in griego), and then I ran seven miles home. I didn't know what I didn't know, but that wasn't going to stop me because I knew how hard I worked. Fast forward to today and I feel about the opposite. I know that I can complete distances I never thought attainable so if I'm tired or not feeling 100% it makes it that much harder to get up and do the training that needs to be done. Lately, my excuse is how cold it's been. I've gotten burned out on the 9 degree, or colder, morning runs. I have about 8 weeks to get off this excuse machine and finish strong.

There's a reason kids are so resilient, they don't know not to be. It takes a special person to train at a high level for any distance race and those of us who aren't at that level either have to decide that training is a fantastic way to get in shape and stay in shape and that races are just the icing on the cake, or we have to realize that we can keep making improvements but we can't let our successes slow down our growth.

Mind over matter

Most of you probably have no idea what the heck the picture is of. It kind of looks like the headless horseman or something evil. It's actually ginseng. The main ingredient for penicillin. The reason that's today's picture is because my grandfather was a woodsman. He used to 'hunt' for wild ginseng. Wild ginseng sells for about $350 a pound. Growing up my grandfather had crates of it drying out in a spare bedroom of his house. What does any of this have to do with running? A lot. Last Thursday my grandfather passed away. His mind was still spot on but his body was failing. I had the opportunity to spend his last good day with him. He talked hunting, fishing and even brought up the packers. He was the same grandpa he's always been. He died two days later. The night he died I spoke to my mom who was exhausted after spending the week in the hospital with him and my grandma and her brother and sister. I could hear how tired she was and it made me think. . . I want to challenge myself for a reason. So I put the following post on facebook: "For everyone that 'likes' this post, I will run a mile tomorrow for my grandfather." It took about a minute before 2 likes came through. I shut off facebook and let things happen. I set my alarm for 3 am the next day so I could have time to do whatever I needed to do. I believe that those people that 'liked' the post did so because they believed that I could do it. I woke up at 3 am to 26 likes. So I set out and toured Madison. Here's the route for what I called "Grandpa's marathon".

It was a struggle. I had only gone that far twice previously and both those where the two marathons I did last year. The only thing I could think about was "Grandpa's marathon". I had to get 26. Along the way I realized something. It wasn't fair if what I was doing was just about me, there were 26 people who believed in me that I could do it, so I wanted them to join. I cut the run at 22.8 (call it 23 miles) and challenged those that challenged me to finish the marathon. I don't expect people that read my blog to go out and be inspired to run a marathon, but I thought that everyone could be included in one and all they had to do was push themselves to finish the race for me and my grandpa.

Since posting my results last Friday, I've had people reach out and tell me they finished the race or will be soon. I even got some thank you's for helping them get back in to running. Running isn't about the distance it's about finishing and when you run for a reason, it makes finishing that much gratifying. Thanks for believing in me and pushing me farther than I thought I could go.

For Chester 'Chet' Gilbert, December 20th, 1930 - March 10th, 2011.