I'm not going to be able to do justice for this post, but I realized that today is a very special day for me as far as running goes. Exactly 2 years ago this day May 1st 2009 I remember jogging on a hotel treadmill in Cancun Mexico, I had just signed up for the St. George marathon (didn't know if I was in or not yet) and then and there it hit me, I weighed close to 250 lbs, could hardly run 2 -3 miles without stopping and I realized that wasn't how I wanted to spend the rest of my life and that the St. George marathon was going to be my goal to change my life. I also saw that Ryan Jonson from my work had just ran the Boston Marathon in 3:04 and St. George in like 2:47, I'd never known anyone that could run a marathon in than 3 hours and was totally amazed, at that point, that was my goal, run a marathon in under 3:00, crazy huh, who can do that? Funny how relative everything is... Nothing else really overly dramatic happend that day, I just remember that being the day I had a complete mindset change. I went and copied a marathon schedule out of a book onto my calander and started following it every day religiously, I'm positive I didn't miss a single workout to the tee from what the book told me to do for the entire cycle.
Looking back I'm really amazed I have gotten to the point I'm at now in 2 years, I've learned a lot, suffered through a lot of pain and disapointment but I'm very excited about what running has done for me and how it has changed my life. When people tell me I should just take time off from running to heal my injuries the concept doesn't even make sense to me, I'm surprised it has only been 2 years, it seems like I have been doing this my whole life.
Well, turns out, I didn't get in to St. George that year, I didn't get into St. George last year now finally I'm garanteed a spot. I'm at the point now where St. George doesn't seem as mystical to me as it did back then, but the symbolism is very great for me. I really want to figure everything out and have a great race this year. Every other race I may do leading up is stirctly a training run, I just want to make sure I do everything just right. I'm probably setting myself up for another huge upset if something happens but I wanted to set the stage. | 