Lord willing, one week from today I leave for Texas and the marathon. Yes, I am beginning to get excited -- and a bit nervous. If you're among the 250,000 U.S. runners who will finish a marathon this year, that places you among one-tenth of one percent of the nation's population. Will your training pay off? That's the question. And you never know what will happen until the race starts. You can play a pickup basketball game without practicing. You can play in a church softball league without taking lessons. But you can't fake a marathon. It requires months of training. Marathoning is the purest of sports. You're not competing for points against an opponent like in football. You're competing against yourself. The race doesn't even start on race day. It started months earlier when you signed up for the event. Whether I finish next week's race or not is already determined by what I've done (or left undone) in training the past many weeks. It's too late to change anything. If all goes well, the marathon will be like a graduation exercise. It will be a celebration of the training that made this day possible. You took on the beast and fought the good fight.
My last week of training will be limited to short and easy runs. Get another massage. Get active rest. Pray. Then leave the results with God.
 |
| Cowtown Marathon course map. |