It didn’t seem possible back in September, when I was on the shelf with a femoral stress fracture, but today I crossed the 2000-mile threshold for 2012.
Not sure what this means in the grand scheme of things, but it still feels pretty cool. I haven’t had many run related posts recently, but things have continued to go well in my training for the 2013 Rock n’ Roll NOLA Marathon in February.
The weather in Middle Tennessee has been a bit unpredictable, from days where it is in the mid 60s by 6am to days where you need two pair of gloves. Last Thursday I finished a track workout at Vanderbilt with the JSRC in 30+ mph wind. It was brutal and felt like I was running in place in the turns. It was such a crazy night that we took a picture at the end to commemorate those who survived 🙂
Today was one of those days where you know you’re a real runner with wind, sleet, and snow pounding you in the face throughout. Even so, Nathan and I still cranked out a good 7-miles through Belle Meade.
By far the highlight of the past couple of weeks was participating in the 26.4.26 run last Saturday in honor of the victims of the Newtown tragedy. The course was a 6.5-mile loop, and runners could choose to run it once or up to four times for a total of 26 miles for the 26 victims at Sandy Hook Elementary.
My longest run since coming back from the stress fracture had been 17-miles on Dec 8th, so I was definitely not trained to run 26-miles. However, on the Thursday before the event I decided I was gonna give it a shot.
Each runner was asked to carry an “angel” with the name of one of the victims, and mine was for Grace McDonnell, age 7:
It wasn’t easy, but little Grace and I made it all the way through 4 loops. 26.38 miles completed in 3 hours and 43 minutes. I faded a bit in the last of the 4 loops but I was determined I wasn’t going to walk a step. I thought a lot that day about Grace and the 25 other precious souls that lost their lives. I’m proud of the city of Nashville and our awesome running community for supporting this effort in such an overwhelming way. It was awesome to be a part of it.
I found out later that the entire thing was born of out a text message that was sent from one friend to another suggesting a group run the following Saturday of 26-miles to honor the victims. After that it was posted on Facebook, and they ended up with 1,012 runners, and many, many volunteers.
Hope everyone else out there is doing well with their running, and enjoying the Christmas Season!
Beast Mode…ON!