I Can Live With That

Giving 5 to Melly

When you have kids everything you do is under a microscope. They learn more from your actions , then from your words. . I am constantly telling them to give their best , because even if you fail , you can be proud of your efforts. If you give up and fail, then it is hard to look at yourself  in the mirror. It is also hard if to face the mirror if they succeed without even trying.

My goal has been to qualify for the Boston Marathon, I have been dreaming of running this race since I was a kid.  I have always loved watching the race on TV and have had family and friends participate in the event the past few years. Although I have been very proud of the people I am close to who ran Boston, I have been a bit jealous that I could not run along side them.

Yesterday I ran the Erie Marathon , which is a Boston Qualifier. I would have had to beat 3 hours and 20 minutes to qualify . The fastest I have run a marathon was 3 hours and 55 minutes ,which means that I would have to knock off over 35 minutes to qualify. That in it's own was a very hard task, but I also had to fight off the memories of a disappointing attempt at running the Buffalo Marathon in May, where I pulled out after the half way mark due to physical issues I was having. I have had several bad dreams since Buffalo about people calling me a quitter and people laughing at me. This was very hard to get over , also harder than I thought to turn into motivation.

Before yesterday's race , the pressure to qualify for Boston seem to be turned up a bit. The first wave of sign-ups for Boston started and I was getting reminders through Facebook about the sign ups ( I follow the event on Facebook and Twitter). So even though qualifying was on my mind , it now started to weigh heavy on my mind.

I started the race a bit on the slow side , ran about a 7:40 mile for the first 3, but picked up the pace and got my average time to where I needed to be and kept it up until mile 20 where I hit the wall. I tried to push through it and did for a while but my pace slowed done considerably , I knew knew that I would not be qualifying for Boston this year around mile 22 , I just didn't have enough to do it.

Legs were cramping!

At that same time a strange calm came over me, my body was in pain , my legs were knotting up with painful cramps,and I was very hungry, but not disappointed about the realization  of not qualifying for the Boston Marathon. I was giving it my best shot and still was going to finish  with a time I could be proud of, as long as I continued to give it everything I had.

I finished with a time of 3 hours and 34 minutes, knocking 21 minutes off my best time. After the race my wife came to me thinking that I was going to be disappointed, but found that I was very happy with the result.



I gave it my best,I can look in the mirror today and not see a quitter , but someone who my kids can see as a a good example.