Road to Chicago Pt. 1

Sunday October 13, 2019 I accomplished one of my biggest dreams and personal goals to date, but

let's back track to when the idea to run in one of the five world major's came an idea that crawled inside my brain or to even attempt to run 26.2 miles for fun.

Who runs for fun? Most people think it is way too much work to run more than 1 mile and they are right, it is. One of the things that drawn me towards running is it's simplicity. All I need is a pair of shoes. I do not need a gym membership or even a treadmill. I can literally walk out my front door and go! The other thing is that I love about running is that my mind controls the next step I take. I find so much value in the fact that I can control when I stop and when I go. What I discovered is that I was able to accomplish much more than I ever thought capable.

I have always ran as a tool for fitness, but in 2017 after football season ended at the school I coached, I found that I needed a challenge. I had recently came off of a Men's Hiking trip that accumulated over 28 miles of hiking through the hill's of the Appalachian Trail in North Georgia and I was hungry for something else. Coincidentally I had a neighbor on the same hiking trip. I remember seeing something on the NYC Marathon on television and was intrigued by the challenge. I thought to myself that if I just signed up for something I would have no choice but to do it and later on I verbalized my goal to my wife. Now that I said it, running a marathon had to happen so I signed up for a half that was a little over a month away early in January. It was in the next town over so I knew travel would not be an issue. I had no clue what to do for training, so I just tried to build myself up to run at least ten miles. I figured that if I could run ten, 13.1 would be easy.

Without adequate training I made it to the 1/2 marathon. It was cold. I was decked out in sleeves and a cheap camo water bladder that I had purchased on amazon. I had rookie written all over me, but when I finished I was in the top five in my age group (30-35) with a time of 2:12:25. This felt promising, so instead of calling it quits there I kept running. I ran all spring with the goal of completing a marathon by the end of that year. I just did not have one picked out yet. Then one morning while running before the sun came up, I spotted a blue light moving through my neighbor hood and it was my friend that I met from the hiking trip that lived down the street and he was running.