2015 LA Marathon

Tomorrow morning I’ll be running the 2015 LA Marathon. It’ll be my fourth marathon overall, and my third LA.

I’m not a very athletic person, either now or in any stage of my youth. As a result, my first marathon was much more a mental exercise than a physical one. I mean, the physical part took lots of training and was hard at nearly every level, but it was nothing compared to getting my head around the fact that this was something I could do. Once I got through that first one, each one since has been easier–even when they’ve been terrible in terms of the physical challenge.

I haven’t run a marathon since 2011, but this year’s training has been real smooth. Unfortunately, it’s projected to be about 90 degrees tomorrow so that training isn’t going to spare me much of a struggle. What will get me through the exhaustion and the pain, and through the feeling that you just want to give up, is a set of things that makes me do this in the first place:

• My kids. I will think of them a lot tomorrow.
• My wife. I can’t do this without her support. Everything good and meaningful in my life comes through her support.
• The understanding that I do this because I can. I have a choice where others do not, both to train to do this and to feel the pain of doing it. Tomorrow I will think of all the people in my family who had to suffer the physical pain of something in their life when they had no choice. I am here because of that sacrifice.

And so, it will hurt and I will wish I didn’t sign-up to do this. But it’s going to feel great, too.