Final (?) Thoughts

Yesterday morning I did a gentle 3-mile run, my second since the marathon, and all seems to be well with the old legs. Aside from a bit of lingering fatigue, they've recovered quickly. Thanks, legs!

At the inspiration dinner the night before the race, one of the speakers (I can't remember which one) said something along the lines of, "The woman who begins training for a marathon is not the same woman who finishes training, and the woman who crosses the start line on race day is not the same woman who crosses the finish line." I think this statement is too strong for me -- I'm still very much Amanda -- but I can see where it's coming from. Training for the marathon has, at the very least, pushed the bounds of my persistence, my pain tolerance, and my ability to delay gratification (for example, my ability to tell myself, "Yeah, but you're going to be glad two months from now when race day rolls around!" while dragging my sleep-deprived self out of bed for a 5-mile run at 5:30am on a Thursday morning). I was pretty sure from the beginning that I would be able to run a marathon if I stuck with the training, but I didn't know if I would stick with the training. Unlike other accomplishment-oriented areas of my life, such as staying in school forever, it'd have been easier to quit at any given point than to keep it up -- training for a marathon has not been the path of least resistance. It's nice to see that I'm capable of sticking with something other than school, something that is challenging in ways I'm not used to being challenged.

It has been cool to have a goal, a sort of shape to my running. I've been running inconsistently since high school. It's been nice, for the first time, to have a good reason to run regularly, other than the vague idea that it's a good thing to do. It's eliminated much of what I dislike about running, which is the before-the-fact arguing with myself about whether to actually do it on any given day. For the most part, I've just gone out and done it, because that's what one does when training for a marathon. There's something I find satisfying, even comforting, about simply doing something because it's what I need to do, even when the something feels like not very much fun.

I think the most striking part of my experience with Team In Training was the fundraising. Asking people for money is not something I ever feel comfortable with, and I did it anyway -- without really believing that many people would actually respond. The generous response I received genuinely surprised me; I hadn't actually known how heard and supported I am. It also reminded me not to assume anything about other people's lives. Some of the most heartfelt emails and largest donations I received came from unexpected people: those I didn't know or hardly knew, those I thought didn't like me very much, those whose lives I would never guess had been affected by cancer. How amazing to realize, in such a tangible and undeniable way, that others also carry with them the triumph of cancer survival and the grief of loved ones lost to cancer. I love that my training for this marathon has served as sort of an organizing force for lots of people to gather together and make a collectively huge contribution to cancer research. Running a marathon might sound impressive, but for me, having raised several thousand dollars for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is by far the bigger accomplishment.

Everyone wants to know whether I'll be running another marathon. I mean everyone, a bizarrely consistent response: I don't think a single person, after hearing about it, has failed to ask me whether I'll do another one. Fascinating. Anyway, the answer is, I don't know. I actually don't even know whether I'll keep running at all; maybe this will turn out to have been a way of tying up the running chapter of my life. Or maybe it will have been the start of a more consistent running career. I'm not going to push myself in one direction or the other; the best thing for me will make itself clear at some point. I think that if I do keep running at all, I will probably do more marathons. But I will only keep running if I derive enjoyment from it, or at least continue to crave it in that weird way that isn't quite enjoyment but is compelling nonetheless.

I also don't know what will happen next with this blog. For awhile it was a veggie blog, then a marathon blog... it is the chameleon of blogs. It has stages of development, just like a little human. Stay tuned if it suits your whim. But a hearty thanks to all of you who've been reading in the marathon phase. Lots of people have let me know that they are reading over the last few months, and this has made me very happy.