For my Christmas gift, my brother Andy registered me for the New Haven Road Race. It is on September 2nd and it is 20k. That is 12.4 miles. For the last four months, I pushed it to the back of my mind. I moved out of my sister's house, I took care of a financial issue I had been ignoring for a very long time, and did absolutely zero running.
A few weeks ago, I called Andy to say hi, thinking in all honesty that he’d decided to let me off the hook for the race, that he’d been too busy finishing up his final year of law school that he’d forgotten. He quickly assured me he had not forgotten and that I am indeed expected to take part in and finish a 12.4 mile race in four months.
I could have gone two ways with this. I could have given him a giant middle finger and turned my back on him. Or I could take a deep breath, ask my sister Sarah, also a runner, to help me come up with some kind of training plan, and just suck it up.
You know what I usually do? My typical response to anything challenging is the first option. I don’t like doing things that are hard. What I did instead was email Sarah, ask her for some help, and start slowly, getting back into running a little bit at a time.
And the reason I went this way this time is because I feel deep deep down that I can’t do it. That I just can’t train for four months and I can’t finish a 12 mile race. But Sarah and Andy believe that I can. I don’t know why. I don’t have any faith or belief in myself, but they both have so much in me that Sarah made me a training plan, emails me reminders to stick to it, volunteers to come run with me. Andy, in the middle of graduating from law school, moving to DC, studying for the Virginia Bar, is going to drop all of it and come do a 10k (my second) with me in two weeks. So while there’s this really loud voice in my head telling me I can’t do it, my brother and sister believe so strongly in me that I don’t want to let them down.
In the end, it has to be for me. But for right now, I won’t listen to the stupid, mean voice in my head, but the encouraging voices of two people who love me very much.
I didn’t want to tell anybody about this upcoming race because of the part of me that’s absolutely sure I can’t do it. If I don’t tell anybody, then no one will know if I fail. But since I’m choosing to act as if I believe I can do it, I’m putting this out here.
On September 2nd, 2013, I will be taking part in the New Haven Road Race, along with my brother, my sister and my brother-in-law. If you’re in the area, you should come cheer us on.
I have one goal. To finish in under three hours. I might have to crawl across the finish line, but I will cross the finish line.
If you would like to view the training schedule Sarah made me (she made it so that I can update it as I go), you can see it here.
Here's a picture from my walk in Hanover today:
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