A Year of Running + Gardening |
2010: In the grips of a Quarterlife crisis, I'm striving to both commit and find meaning through training for a marathon and becoming a first time gardener. 2011: Second marathon. Second (dead) garden. Higher stakes. 2012: Half-marathoning? Gardening is unlikely Have I bitten off more than I can chew? Probably. Only time will tell. |
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I have a confession. I’ve been bad about blogging lately because I feel that I didn’t accurately paint a picture of my experience of training for the marathon as a part of Team in Training. It was an unbelievably emotional experience and it’s deeply affected my decision to train for another marathon.
For those of you who don’t know, I trained in honor of Tressa VanAnda, who lost her battle with leukemia in 2004. I didn’t know her when she was alive, but we both fell in love with the same man, years apart. Rather than try and explain again, I encourage you to read the post I wrote last year, here.
In knowing that I made a commitment and that her family and friends were reading my blog, I felt compelled to share that I thought about Tressa on every run. Whenever I felt tired, or like I couldn’t go on, I thought about how she didn’t have a choice to be diagnosed with leukemia or to fight it. She didn’t get to have a day off. She had to fight. To me, it meant that I didn’t have any choice, but to run. It was out of my hands.
In approaching this marathon, it’s completely different. I’m doing this for me. I fail because of me. I run because of me. It’s been a struggle in “pre-training” and it’ll continue to be.
Today was the first official day of training. There’s 138 days until the race.
