Ducks in a Row

Last fall, I was looking through my running book, musing. I do most of my musing when I’m alone in the evening and I have a tendency to get caught up in my own grand plans.

Anyway, I was bored, and goal-less and so I figured I may as well train for a marathon because why not, right? I didn’t want to do a fall marathon because that involves long runs in August and I hate running in the heat. So, spring it was. I thought about Bluenose, but decided against it (as an aside – a LOT of people have asked me why Ottawa and why not Bluenose – I mean, I *live* in Halifax and here is the honest to goodness answer and please be gentle in your judgement. Ottawa is flat. Halifax is not. I wanted to blow my old time out of the water and I just didn’t know if that would be possible on an extremely hilly and hard and COLD run). Ottawa it was.

I thought for a long time about what my goal would be. I was pretty sure I’d be able to break 4:30, and I didn’t think I’d be able to break 4:00, so I settled on 4:15. Ambitious, but with lots of training, realistic (plus, with my first marathon time of over 5:30, I was set to blow my old PB out of the water).

Then sometime through the winter, I decided to run with Team Diabetes. The race minimum for Ottawa is $500, but I knew I could raise that in a day, so I wanted to do more. in 2009, I raised $3000 for The Children’s Wish Foundation. I thought long and hard about setting a $10,000 goal, but wasn’t sure I’d make it. I settled on $7,000. Ambitious, but with lots of fundraising, realistic (plus, I was set to blow my old fundraising max out of the water) (see a pattern here?).

And then the winter rolled by and the cold and dreary spring has also mostly passed and here I am, six days before the marathon, dreaming about it every night, and this morning something wonderful happened. Two final donations came in that put me over $7000.

I’m so proud of all the people who donated $20 or $1000 and everything in between. I’m proud because they gave for me and I’m proud because they gave for my best friend and I’m proud that I’ve been able to do this.