Boston Bound (and Thrilled!!)

There we were in the gym, a bunch of 12 and 13 year old girls trying their hand at track for the first time. The coaches had us divide into two groups: distance and sprint. Some girls knew instantly where they belonged. I moved to the sprint group, thinking there was no possible way I could be a distance runner. I don’t remember if it was that practice or at a later date, but my coaches recognized my mistake. Soon, I was running with the distance girls, running more than I ever thought possible. We used to run “out to the T and back”. That was a regular run, even through my high school years. It was a t-intersection that was just over a mile from the school. Round trip, we would clock 2.2 miles. That felt like a marathon back then. I never imagined I would go on to run actual marathons.

As time went by, I experimented with longer distances and eventually, the Boston Marathon became the big goal. We all have those. Those “bucket list” type goals. The ones that sometimes feel like a pipe dream more than something that’s actually plausible or possible. You know the kind. That was Boston for me. My qualifying race was Indianapolis. I originally set out to run with a friend, and my goal was to train with her and help her get her PR (personal record). But before training began, she told me that she wan’t going to be able to train for the full. With her kids, her work schedule, and the other chaos of life, it just wasn’t plausible this time around. I started floating the idea of trying to qualify for Boston… not really sure if it was possible or not. But I figured if I was ever going to try, now was the time. I started my training, and struggled so much on the first few weeks of speed workouts. I had serious doubts about my ability to even finish a marathon, let alone BQ. But my husband and my friends encouraged me. (Thank you, guys. I seriously don’t think I could be where I am without you!) Like. Seriously encouraged me. Whether I finished a run or not. And when I started to believe what they were saying, and started to move past my mental block, the runs started going better. (They say running is 90% mental. I’m not sure it’s that high, but mental toughness is definitely an important strength of any runner, for any distance.)

Race day came, and any of you that have raced can imagine the nerves, the anticipation, the excitement, and the sheer terror of the starting line. The first couple of miles are always pretty easy because adrenaline carries you through. My goal was to hold pace till the halfway mark and then reevaluate as needed. I stayed with my goal pacer until about 18 miles in, and then almost unconsciously I started speeding up. It wasn’t very long before I couldn’t even see my pacer group anymore. By the time I made it to mile 22 I was ready to quit. But I pushed through, and finished in a time of 3:18:36, beating my goal time of 3:20 and crushing the BQ time of 3:30 for my age group.

Now, I’m a few weeks into Boston training and struggling with motivation to run. How ridiculous! I have worked so hard, and God has been so gracious, as to allow me to achieve my goal of qualifying and now I don’t even want to run half the time. Part of it is the cold (I really don’t like cold weather…). Part of it is just needing to return to my routine. But I am so extremely grateful and excited to have this opportunity. Plane tickets are purchased, hotel is booked… it’s real. And it’s amazing. So that goal that you think you can’t reach? Go for it. Faithfully work towards it. You never know what God may do with it.