Welcome!

This blog is to document my seemingly impossible, somewhat daunting, yet extremely exciting, journey to completing my first marathon. I invite you to keep track of my progress and cheer me on: I know I'll need your support!

Speaking of support... I am not taking on this adventure just for bragging rights or just to look better during beach season. I have pledged to raise money for St. Jude's Children Research Hospital. After some reading, I'm very excited to join their cause: they will not turn down cancer treatments for children of families who cannot afford it. I'm thrilled my fundraising efforts will go towards helping a child receive the proper care, to give them a fighting chance against a disease that has unfortunately, almost certainly, touched at least one person we know and care about.

Please visit my fundraising page to support in any way you can and keep on visiting my blog to nudge me off my couch and get on the trail! www.mystjudeheroes.org/funnytoes

Thursday, March 10, 2011

How I got this far...

Okay, well "they" say the best motivation for running a marathon is to register for a marathon.  And my particular "they" was actually my great friend and former college roommate, Kristen Wilson.  She has one marathon under her belt already (you are awesome, friend!!) and she signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon in DC this October. 


Well, let me back up a little bit- I've been toying with the idea of running a half marathon for a while- however, committing to any race is where I usually fall short.  But alas, I was determined to finally sign up for a half, because a full would be CRAZY.  So I decided I would tentatively commit to running a half, and ordered myself a book to help motivate me to actually register... oh yeah, and to train...

So I started reading Dawn Dais's, "The Non-Runner's Marathon Guide for Women: Get Off Your Butt and On With Your Training".  This is a humorous guide written by someone I can actually relate to- she LOVES watching tv, she loves finding a close parking spot, and she was also scared of dying in the process of training for her marathon.  The book encourages readers to journal their own marathon running efforts, much like she did.  And since I think it's likely that once I complete this marathon, I may never want to take one on again, I figured it'd be a good idea to follow suite and blog my journey because I rarely take on feats of this magnitude, and like I said, doubt I will after this:)

So now that I'm almost finished with the book, and saw that Kristen signed up for her second marathon, I decided- screw a half!!  I'm going to push myself to impossible limits, and I figured a short lapse in reality like this only comes to me every so often, so I should go with it and REGISTER!

Well, this is where my actual marathon journey really began I suppose- without registration, there is no journey... and would you believe that I went to the Marine Corps Marathon website to register, to see that it sold out- in just over two days of being open... this means that almost 30,000 people gobbled up the online registration spots in about 48 hours... these are spots that seal your fate of running 26.2 miles- I can't get past this- if it was sold out and I was trying to register for a free Macbook, yes, maybe shock wouldn't be my reaction... but, come on people!  

However, this was a good thing- because I found out, through some reading that I was still able to register, if I agreed to fundraise for a charity.  And so I found St. Jude's.  

So maybe it's all meant to happen this way... hopefully this is a sign I'm meant to finish my journey of completing 26.2.    I definitely want one of the 26.2 bumper stickers on my car November 1st if this all really works out for me!  Just had to throw that out there.


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