Courage of Conviction

Over on my EADDblog, I posted an article about signing up for the Hartford Marathon, why I decided to run another marathon and how it relates to business.  Here’s an excerpt:

The marathon signifies so many things to me - perseverence, dedication, development, pushing yourself to your limits and beyond, attitude, focus, and more.  People ask me how I can do it, year after year.  How can I do all the training that is required, especially with a young family.  How can I run 4 hours straight.  How can I be excited about getting out an running in the rain in the early morning.  How can I…

The simple answer is that I can’t do any of that - what I can do is be someone who takes one step and then another and then another.  It’s not about running 26.2 miles - it’s about running up to the next corner, or taking the next step - pushing myself to do just one more because I know I can.  Small and simple is the way you do a marathon.  As the old Chinese proverb goes - the journey of a thousand miles begins with one first step.  The same is true with a marathon. 

The key for you, my dear reader, is to relate the marathon to yourself.  What is your marathon?  Is it your business? 

Enjoy.

I completed my fifth marathon on Saturday - the Baltimore Marathon.  I finished in 4:58:10.  Not my fastest marathon by any means, but not my slowest either.  Actually, I was really pleased considering I have been dealing with a lagging injury to my hip.  It bothered me between mile 16 and 23, but I pushed through anyway. 

Here’s a neat story about the marathon.  I was wearing my Maring Corp Marathon shirt from a couple of years ago when I ran the Marine Corp marathon.  On the back of the shirt is the Marine Corp seal.  One of the other runners came up to me after the race and said that I kept him going.  I had passed him near the end of the race.  He saw the seal and thought about our troops overseas and what they must go through each day - the least he could do would be to finish this race and finish strong, which is exactly what he did.  He thanked me for wearing the shirt.  I told him that his story is exactly what doing a marathon is all about - all the runners helping each other to push ourselves to be the best we can be.  If you’ve ever run a distance race, you know what I’m talking about.  It’s not about beating the guy running next to you - it’s about pushing yourself to see what you are made of. 

I ran the Harrisburg Half-Marathon this morning.  I finished in 2:07:09.  That’s a 9:42 pace. 

For those of you who are long time readers of this blog know, I am a distance runner, having run four marathons over the last four years.  This year I’m scheduled to run the Baltimore marathon on Oct. 13.  The past month I’ve been dealing with injury.  I haven’t been able to run more than two miles at a time.  What happened was the same thing that happened to me during the Marine Corp Marathon a couple of years ago - I stepped on something and twisted my ankle.  This caused severe pain in my hip this time.  Well, Over the last week and a half, I’ve been getting treatment from a massage therapist.  It is going very well.  On Friday I ran 4 miles before stopping because I was tight.  And this morning I ran about 7 miles before stopping, although I wanted to continue.  I feel ready to run the Harrisburg Half-Marathon next weekend.  I highly doubt I’ll break any records, even my own personal best - but that’s ok, that’s not why I am running it - it’s a good training run for the full marathon in Oct. 

The biggest surprise for me is muscle memory.  Here it has been about a month since I have been able to run past 2 miles and I have already run 11 miles in the last two days.  That’s amazing to me.  If muscle works that way, I’m sure that other areas of our body work in a similar fashion.