The Journey to the Starting Line

As strange as the beginning of this blog post may seem, I feel that my training to for the Half Marathon I ran on June 7th was exactly this. It has been almost a month since I left my home at 4:00AM, loaded into the back of my parent's car with jello legs and an unsteady mind. Almost a month since I sat on the grass of the Chicago South Cultural Center, stretching, wondering if the race was ever going to start. A month since I stood at the starting line.
Upon standing in my race corral, at the starting line, I realized something big and great and life-changing. Before I started training, I was strictly a casual runner. I'd run for about a month, then get bored with it and not run for a couple of weeks, then start to feel the "pain" of the scale, then run for another month...running though, running wasn't something I truly loved. It was something I did. So, when the crazy part of my brain decided to attempt the half...which now I realize is extremely attemptable...I don't think I even knew what I was about to get myself into. I trained for a total of 8 weeks. I worked my little butt off, in a sense. I ran more miles, and more often than I ever had before. I stepped up each rung of the intensity latter, not with ease, but none the less, I definitely did. I specifically remember, one night probably two weeks before the half, I started crying. I was tired of running every day, I wanted running to be something that I did again, not something that I was endlessly dedicated to. I was tired and extremely nervous, and doubting the fact that I could do it. I guess a big part of me thought that after the half, my running routine would gradually decrease to a casual running schedule like it had been before. I thought that since I would've already run the half, already accomplished my goal, that I would just be done. What I didn't realize was that there was a sneaky little tiny part of me that knew otherwise. That was the part that truly believes I can conquer anything I go at, the part that makes my mind think I can knock over mountains. It's the strong part of me, the part that's partially insane, the part that has caused me to bungee jump, try strange foods, fly across the entire world to go to a country that isn't necessarily the safest place to be at that specific moment in time...that little part of me that makes me an extremist...yeah, that part had other plans. Standing at the starting line of the Chicago 13.1 Marathon, that little part of me took over, and I realized something...something great and big and wonderful...and life changing...I realized that somewhere in the 8 weeks, my journey to the finish line, I became a runner. Not a casual one, a real one...one that would definitely not stop running after the half...one that had already set new goals for herself. I had become a person who loves the sport she does, loves everything about it. Crossing that finish line was monumental, but standing at the starting line? That changed my life. So, it's 7AM, I'm sitting here with my coffee, waking up a little before my morning run. I have another run scheduled for this evening also. I wake up at the crack of dawn and go to bed as the sun is setting...this is my life, but I love it. I love being a runner...it's definitely hard, but it's definitely amazing...you should try it.

I'll leave you with a quote.

"Running is a question that stands at the beginning of every day...it asks you, are you going to be a wimp today, or are you going to be strong?"