Wringing out

In a word: insane. Also: dedicated, ridiculous, soggy, and inspired.

You see, Internets, when you qualify for the Boston Marathon and then get yourself registered for the Boston Marathon, it's a really good idea to train for the Boston Marathon.

This is the first time I've ever trained for an event on my own, every other race I've done with the team, and in the past year, I've also started coaching for the team. Leave it to me to turn an individual sport into a team activity. I've always found it impossible to find intrinsic motivation to get myself out running on my own. But the Boston Marathon is different. It is definitely a once-in-my-lifetime race, so I've taken my training a little bit more seriously. And today was proof of that: 18 miles in the pouring rain.

Running and I have a love/hate relationship, really it's more of a barely tolerate/hate relationship. This in and of itself is insane, I know, because if I don't love running, how could I spend so much of my time doing it? That's an excellent question and one that I thought about for a good portion of my 18 miles this morning. It's not a matter of me loving running, or even liking running, or event wanting to go for a run; it's a matter of me needing running. When life is crazy and I'm all in my head, nothing clears it out like a run. And once I get myself through the first three or four miles (yes, I know how absurd that statement may sound to all the non-runners out there because three or four miles would be considered by many a really far way to run), then I can just go and go and go (yes, I know how the runners out there totally get what I'm saying).

What I don't need, however, are the buckets and buckets of rain. Standing on my front porch, looking out at the downpour before the run, I almost started to cry. Really. It was raining. Hard. And I know that I live in Seattle, and that it's March--the height of the rainy season--but if I didn't have the once-in-my-lifetime race only five weeks away, there would have been absolutely no way I would have left my house. Often, the rain in Seattle is what AP has aptly described as "dry rain," you can see that it's raining, you can hear that it's raining, but you can't really feel that it's raining. In case you were wondering, the rain today sure wasn't dry. I'm still working on getting my hands and feet back to their natural un-pruned state. In fact when I got home, I blasted Red Tide by Neko Case (take a listen and you'll see why at the 2:03 minute mark).

So, I don't love running and I don't love the rain (well, I do love the rain, just not while I'm running), but I do love the team and even more I love the coaching. I love the people, I love concept, and I love the cause. To be a part of something so much bigger than me and to work toward finding a cure for blood-related cancers, that has definitely carried me across countless miles. And today, blocks from ending my run, I came across a woman walking down the puddle-lined street; she smiled at me and said, "Run a mile for me. Breast cancer." I smiled, held back some tears and said, "Consider it done. All of my miles are for finding a cure for cancer." We shared little victory fist pumps and went our separate ways. Yeah, I needed that as much as I needed that run.