Running My First Marathon

I ran a marathon last month. But why? Why would anyone in their right mind willing run 26.2 miles? 52,400 steps. 42 kilometers. Side note: 42 is the meaning to life.

So what inspired me to run a marathon? Well, to see if I could do it. A marathon is something special. It’s not a race against other runners. It’s a very personal race. A race against yourself. And that means most runners are supporting one another.

This was my first marathon and it is one amazing sense of accomplishment. A year prior I ran my first ultra marathon. This was the Tsali Frost Foot 50K. It was on a mountain, in the freezing cold and rain. Oh, and I was coming off a sickness that made me lose 11 pounds in 10 days. At mile 20 of the 31.1 mile race, my body was done. It was 5 more miles to the nearest aid station where I had to admit defeat. 1 mile shy of a marathon.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this failure had been haunting me. I wanted to run a marathon. For an entire year, that one extra mile nagged at me. “Why didn’t you just run another mile?”

So when I drove my Jeep down to Chattanooga that November morning and saw 29 degrees on the dashboard, I wasn’t deterred. I saw it as a challenge. Running down the streets with all the other highly motivated (and slightly insane) marathoners, I was in my element.

Before the race started, I struggled to stay warm. I walked around the starting line. Went to packet pickup and quickly decided I’d go back to the Jeep and get back in the heat. I…