Reflections

For those of you who have been reading since the beginning, the big news in our house is that my dissertation is officially done. It has finally been approved by my committee, which means graduation in May. I'm thrilled.

At the suggestion of my husband, I've spent the past 30 minutes reading old posts from December, January and February to see how far we've come. It's been a lot of fun to read from Day One to today. I'm amazed at how much progress I've made. I never would have thought that by mid March I'd be able to run SIX minutes in a row. It's quite cool. I've learned that I'm serving as inspiration from some very important people in my life. This discovery inspires ME further to keep up the good fight, even when I just want to sit down on the treadmill with a diet Coke and watch Dr. Phil rather than run with him.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If I can do this marathon training thing, anyone can do just about anything.

To illustrate the mental impact running has had on my life, I share this story from junior high (I believe I was in 8th grade): I was on the volleyball team. I love volleyball. When I was in 7th grade, our team got 2 real cool, but very competitive, coaches. At the time, they were about 24 years old, which seemed ancient to me. Geez. What was I thinking? Anyway, we always started out practice with a mile-long run. Ick! But one of the coaches, R., was very understanding of my hate for running. He pushed me in the right way, and he encouraged me to push myself. The other coach, D., had absolutely no clue what to do with 12/13/14 year old girls. Instead of encouraging me, he insulted me (which, I've learned in my adult years, is how male coaches often deal with male players; this is, however, NOT the way to deal with female players). One day, when I was finishing up my mile (I was the last person on the track), one of my friends began to complain to D. about something. As I crossed the line, I said, "Yeah, what's that all about?" (or something to that effect). D. looked at me and goes, "(Insert my maiden name), you have NO right to complain about anything. You're so slow we should have just left you behind" (outside at the track). Uh, hi. Jerk. What does being slow have to do with being mouthy (I admit that I was talking back to the coach :) ). Since then (1988!) I have associated running with that incident. My motto has wrongly been: if you can't run it fast, don't even bother. It's only now that I really understand what running is all about. It's not about being fast or slow or sweaty or blotchy. It's about giving it a shot. Had I not said to Stef, "I need to focus on something else (besides my dissertation and some other personal things)," and had Stef not said to me, "How about we do something to together?" I would not be here. I knew I had to give it a shot. I knew that I would regret for the rest of my life not trying this. I'm glad I did, because it's going better than I ever thought possible.