running a marathon

When I was about four to six weeks old, I stopped taking naps. Mom always said it was because I was so eager to take on the world at full-speed ahead that I was unwilling to stop for even a 30-minute shut-eye...

As I've aged, this full-speed ahead tendency has not diminished, but continues to be a primary part of my operating system. I'm a runner by blood-line [my father once knocked out a tooth by running into a moving mini-van racing his mother home from college... yes, college]. But even as a runner, I live for the sprints. I love the adrenaline rush of pushing so hard that your muscles begin to burn, you can't breathe, but you can feel the wind rushing by and you're barely touching the ground, and you start to feel like you're flying... yeah, basically my favorite feeling in the whole world!

My sophomore year in high school, I began running cross-country competitively in order to stay in shape for soccer. And when I started running cross-country, 3.11 miles felt super long, just to be able to sprint the last quarter mile. But I learned to pace, because I learned very quickly that I couldn't finish the race unless I learned to run at a sustainable pace. Sprinting is exhilarating... but it does you very little good, unless you can also cross the finish line.

And this lesson has carried over to life as well. While I would love to [and sometimes do] jump into a million different exciting new opportunities and take on thousands of delightful projects simultaneously, that pace tends to be completely devastating to all operating systems. As much as I would like for it to be a sprint, life is not a sprint... it's a distance run.

Now, I find myself at another major crossroads in life, it seems only fitting that I am also running my first marathon. Because life and relationships are not a sprint, but a distance run... and with the exception of the most elite runners, marathons are not a matter of how fast you run, or how beautiful your form is, or if you have to walk for a bit, or even about being better than everyone else... marathons are about going the distance, and finishing the race, not about the sprints... or so I've heard.

So here I find myself, in training. Jumping into the unknown. Building up endurance and preparing to run the race... You just might have to remind me to slow down every now and then... :)