Saturday, October 29, 2011

Marathon

Ever since I completed my first half marathon a year and a half ago, people have been asking me when I'm going to do a marathon. My first answer was "When I can do a 90 minute half marathon." When that goal looked actually feasible, I changed my answer to either "When I have a good reason to" or "I'll run a marathon if she's really cute," depending on the seriousness of the situation.


On Monday, September 26th of this year a young marine named Scott Davidson died in a motorcycle accident. I knew him through his brother, Sean Davidson. We had talked motorcycles and gone water skiing/wake boarding a few times together. Scott was signed up to run the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington DC as a fundraiser for the wounded warriors project on October 30th, 5 weeks later. To honor him, Sean decided to take his brother's race number and run the marathon for him, with five weeks to train and having never run a marathon.

I had been planning on attending the race to encourage Sean, and then, a week and a half ago, he asked me to run it with him. I had been thinking about what it would mean to run a marathon because of talking to him about his training, but it still took a while for the possibility to sink in. In the end there's no way I could give up on such an opportunity.

I could go out tomorrow and run a half marathon with a pretty decent time, maybe even get close to my PR, but there's a big difference between a half and a whole... simply put I am not trained for this. But neither is Sean. So tomorrow my goal is to make sure that he crosses the finish line. My knee hurts, I might be catching a cold, and the temperature at 8am tomorrow morning will hopefully be above 32 degrees.

"When are you going to run a marathon, Peter?"
"When I have a good reason to."

I found one.

Say a prayer for Sean today.

Thanks

Peter