In 1996 I ran my first marathon. Having since run another four, and now preparing for the sixth and perhaps seventh, I learned that life is a lot like preparing for and running a marathon. Cliche's and tired metaphors aside (seriously, I'm going to try hard to avoid them) living one's life and training for a marathon both come equipped with excitement, hesitation, uncertainty, pain, bruises, frustration, setbacks, adjustments, persistence, determination, exhilaration, a little luck, and joyful success.
Through all the marathon training and preparation, I learned that the life most exciting to live is the one that requires you to reach a little further than you feel capable, and when you pull in with the nails and tips of your fingers that thing you're longing for, well, then you realize just how capable you are. More importantly, you understand that you can achieve the impossible.
Not only did "marathoning" teach me that I could achieve the impossible, but it revealed that daily living becomes fulfilling when there is an inspirational "north star" guiding your path. Be it a wedding, an exciting trip, planning for the birth of a child, buying a house, becoming a doctor or astronaut or explorer, winning the championship game... well, you get it. It lifts you up, carries you, and sets you on your way, unlike the mundane drudgery of daily, ordinary living.
If you have experienced something like this in your life, you might remember how this event - this thing - shapes your daily behavior and changes your whole world view. Pretend the event is the European vacation you've longed for for years. You've set your your sights. The tickets are purchased, the hotel reserved. In the meantime all you can think about is the adventure. You control your expenses at home to save money for the trip.You might buy some new clothes. You study the local culture and cuisine. You research museums and attractions. You even learn a few phrases in the native tongue. So much of your life is influenced by this trip... and you're OK with that because your're motivated and excited.
This, I call the Big Thing. And if "Big Thing" wasn't already taken, that would be the name of this blog. But alas.
In this blog, the Big Thing is the marathon, but I invite you to subsitute marathon with anything Big Thing in your life, and you will discover that almost everything that I write about training for a marathon applies to whatever other Big Thing shines high in your sky.
The purpose of this blog is to catalogue preparations for the January 2012 Houston Marathon and February 2012 Rock and Roll Marathon in New Orleans but to also hopefully impart simple, pedestrian observations made over the last 14 years that will prove to you to dream the Big Thing and to go after it no matter how "impossible" it seems to you.
