On May 31st, 2009 I ran the inaugural Minneapolis Marathon. It turned out to be a very special day for me. I needed to run a 3:20.59 to accomplish my goal and qualify for the 2010 Boston Marathon. On this day, running along the Mississippi River, I finished in 3:20.40. As my friend Kurt pointed out shortly after the race, that was about 9/10ths of a second per mile faster than I needed to run!
It's hard for me to explain just what this accomplishment means to me. I have worked exceptionally hard to accomplish this goal and I have experienced significant disappointments and a hardy share of self doubt over the past year. And at the end of the day, to actually make it happen, leaves me feeling like it was all worth while.
In late April at the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon when I crashed by mile 12, gave up on my goal by mile 13, and forgave myself around mile 17, this day seemed too far away to imagine. It's a long, long way between "forgiving" myself so I can finish the marathon and getting my head back on straight.
Between that day in April and this marathon, I visited the chiropractor and a massage therapist and tried to both rest and ramp up the number of fast miles I ran. My thoughts raced while wondering if it would be possible to recover sufficiently, in a matter of 5 weeks, in order to put in another Boston qualifying attempt. And, was I over training by trying to run more intense miles in between efforts? Was I setting myself up for a double failure?
Especially that last question was nagging at me when I spoke with my sister-in-law two weeks before the Minneapolis Marathon. She scolded me for my negative thinking and I owe her a big thank you for that. She was right to remind me that negative thinking would get me negative results and I acted on that advice by changing my thinking.
And finally after 19 miles of holding it together on race day and then one more mile of staying very close to where I needed to be, my body began to rebel against me. By mile 23 I had almost no room for error left and missing my goal was looking more and more likely. Somehow, I stayed close to the goal and Kurt was at mile 25 encouraging me and I could hear in his voice that I had to go, go , go if I had any chance. I heard both concern and encouragement and the concern was valid. Up ahead lay the most difficult marathon finishing hill I have ever heard of and I would have to scale it while staying on pace.
And then as I struggled, the refrain in my head was "Keep fighting". What else could I do? Well, I could stop fighting of course. And no one would have thought worse of me had I just walked and explained that my body could not run any farther. I mean really, my body could not run any farther.
But it did go farther. I have to admit, looking back I'm not sure why. Thank God.
I finished and I cried.
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