Just a wee bit further

I had every intention of writing this post on October 27th (the actual 2 year anniversary of the picture). It was even a Thursday so it would have been perfect. Unfortunately, I only had it half written and in the weeks that followed Thursday would come…and go…and I still hadn’t gotten any further. So here we are. A quasi-TBT…on a Monday.

Ok I’m cheesing a whole lot in this picture. Why am I so happy?

1. I was in Ireland
2. I had just run my very first marathon
3. I managed to not look like a sweaty mess in the “after” picture, a feat at any distance really. (At this point you might expect that I would thank the Irish climate for that, with its ample cloud cover and cool, breezy days. Well, even two years later I remember that it was 68 degrees and sunny that day which is decidedly not Irish weather.)
4. I was in Ireland (yes, that merits a second mention)
5. I had 0 miles left between me and pint of Guinness

That’s right, I had run a marathon. Which is nothing short of shocking for anyone who knew me as a kid, as a high schooler, even as a college student. To this day, I can’t remember when the idea struck me that I should run a marathon. I bring this all up now not just to relive my glory days (but seriously even my arms look kind of fit, go me!) but because I am lacing up my sneakers again. Come April 30th, I will be running the Big Sur Marathon. It’s going to be my first marathon on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, although strangely enough I’ll be staring at the Pacific the whole time. Whoa, I wonder if I’ll ever run a marathon on the other side of the Pacific. Or is Europe the other side of the Pacific?  Hmm..

In addition to the marathon taking place here in the good ol’ US of A, there is one other thing that makes this different from Dublin above: fundraising. Big Sur is one of many marathons that offers the option to fundraise for a charity of your choice and after perusing the page full of options, I decided on Project Purple. I signed up, received my welcome package, and set up my fundraising page which thus far looks really, really sad. But for the next four months, in addition to training, I will also be sharing facts and stats, and training-related pictures (and hopefully minimal training-related complaints though I can’t make any promises).

At this point, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure which aspect of this whole thing is making me more nervous.

On the one hand, this is my first venture into fundraising and I have a hard enough time simply asking people for directions, never mind money (even if it is for a good cause).

On the other hand, I am currently writing this post while eating a handful of Christmas sugar cookies topped with leftover chocolate frosting. I’m clearly miles away from running a marathon (get it? miles away).

Fortunately, real training doesn’t start until after the holidays so I still have plenty time to actually train for the race, and post lots of (hopefully funny and motivational) training-related posts, and get the hang of fundraising.

After eating lots and lots of cookies of course.