A World Without Ends

I have great news!  I'm alive!

Final time for my marathon run: 4:29:04.  I was extremely excited to know I made it under four and a half hours.  The whole time I was running that's what I was thinking: I really want to get under four and half.

All in all, great experience.  I was REALLY starting to feel it around mile 24, but by then you're all in.  Nothing left to do but move forward and hope that your limp body doesn't fall to the pavement before you cross the finish line.  And if it does, hope that its at a point where the momentum of your tumbling carries you over the line.  What a great photo finish that would be.

Most would say that I'm a glutton for punishment, but I truly enjoyed myself, and not just because I accomplished a life goal.  The support of friends and family I had backing me, that ridiculous poster my friend Phil made for the event, and all the other inspiring/ridiculous posters people had made for runners all made the experience unforgettable.  A few of my favorite signs/posters:

"Worst parade ever."

"There will come a day when you can no longer do this.  Today is not that day."

"Because 26.3 miles would just be CRAZY."

"I'm lazy."

And a few others which I've forgotten in the foggy haze of my post adrenal mind.  But the one in the photo above was the one I was looking for, because it meant, "Hey, there's some blue Gatorade and a Cliff bar up ahead."

The question is, "Now what?"  I'm done.  Months of training, treating my body as well as I could, and following through with my mad dream to the end has paid off.  The race is over.  Mom suggested Boston Marathon.  The qualifying time is three hours and ten minutes.  I have to beat my time by an hour and nineteen minutes.  I don't think that'll be happening anytime soon.

I will admit, this has given me more of a vigor for life,  not wanting to be complacent but to push the limits as far as they can go, no matter what I do.  Two years ago, had you told me I was to finish a marathon, I would've laughed.  Or maybe I would've have believed you, yet still been shocked.  Until a couple years ago, a little over two miles on the tredmill was all I could do before I became winded.  That was my limit, until I created new limits.   So, a limit isn't really a limit at all in some circumstances.  A limit tells you what you can do right now.  But it stands there, waiting for you to push past it, and when you do it has to catch up in order to stop you again.  And again.  And again.

So seriously, not trying to be a motivational poster in the 90's, but you really can do whatever you want.  You simply have to be willing to work.  You can't expect it to just happen.  It took a year and a half to go from two miles to 26.2 miles.  It was tough.  There were bad days that involved the walk of shame to finish.  Then there were days where I felt like I could run through brick walls and keep going.  There is no end.  You make your own ends.

Most things are mental anyway.  We think it's impossible.  Running a marathon sounds hard, I agree.  Truly, its one of the easiest things.  You put one foot in front of the other.  That's it.  You don't have to do anything else.  You don't have to play an intricate line on the piano.  You don't have to solve a difficult physics equation.  You don't have to perform brain surgeory.  You just have to put one foot in front of the other.  Pain, discomfort, that's all mental.  You can over come that, unless your leg actually snaps in two.  But if you keep running, I'd really really respect you.  That's hardcore.

In other news, my mother tells me my Aunt Pegge has sent me a typewriter owned by my great-grandfather, Silas Clark.  Really excited about that.  So, for any of your who legitamately planned to send me a typewriter and looked through all the local antique malls, I'm grateful but the need is no longer present.  You can go back about your business.  I'll ask for something later though.

That's all I have.  Glad we had this little pep talk.  Take care.  Push those limits.

Peace.

Time Travel at Normal Speed.

Well, I don't know what brought you to do it, but you wound up back here.  I appreciate it.  It makes me think, "Oh man, I am really cool and some people think I'm both funny and a genius."  Some people in this life don't really get to feel that way.  Unless he/she is really pretentious and in love with him/herself.  Which, the case still may be that deep down inside he/she actually feels inadequate and needs to make up for that by pretending to be funny and a genius.  I don't know.  I'm not a psychologist.

I'm not a lot of things.  Have you figured that one out yet?  Right, of course you have.  Right now I'm a guy in his fuzzy pajama-jam pants and t-shirt, drinking Sakura Allure green tea (one of the new installments to the Teavana selection), and listening to Dredg's "The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion".  Comfy day after Halloween.

Unsure of what to post this week, but I had a few ideas.  Let's roll with one of them.

Now, as some of you may or may not know, I was once a fat kid.  That thing to the left?  Fat kid.  Fourteen years old.  Spring of eighth grade, 2001.  As you can tell, I wasn't really socially conscious, either, which didn't really help my weak, adolescent self-esteem, which I can go more in depth on another time with both funny and scarring anecdotes.  And my looks?  I don't even think the 90's would've allowed it (and they did allow a lot).  First of all, I'm wearing a ridiculous early 90's Hawaiian shirt ("But Michael, how do you know it's from the early 90's?" "Because It was once my father's and he got it when we went to Hawaii in 1991.  I wore it back then because I thought Hawaiian shirts were 'in'").  I also had quite the bowl cut for many years.  Glance over to exhibit B.

                                         Exhibit B.
(The only way you can make this cuter is if you were to staple new born kittens to this child.)

Yeah, ever since I was a tot I was graced with a golden bowl atop my crown.  And pinchable cheeks.  Which, however you look at it, could be a blessing, or something you wish you could do away with altogether so that people wouldn't think your six years younger than you are (See "How I Spend My October" for an in depth explanation). 

The point of all of this being is that, yesterday morning, at about 7 am Central Standard Time, I registered myself for the GO! St. Louis Marathon, something I've been anticipating to accomplish for about a year.  Now, as you may remember, loyal followers, I did mention in "Going the Extra Mile" that this is one of my life goals.  After I realized a year ago that I can run more than a couple miles at one time, I figured I could continue to add on the miles.  A marathon will just be a very drawn out, two mile run.  I'm excited, but mostly terrified.  I may or may not die.  This may be the last thing I accomplish in life.  If this is so, speak with Phillip Freeman.  He knows best on how to prepare my funeral.  There will be a cake and everything.

But in all seriousness, I'm really excited about training and actually going through with it.  A lot of the things I actually accomplished in my life that were notable I was pressured into doing.  Maybe pressured isn't the right word, but I was coaxed to accomplish certain goals that weren't necessarily completely my own.  This goal, though, is mine.  No one told me to do it.  I'm completely choosing to do it, and the reward from that feels even more special.  Then again, perhaps that smiling fat kid in picture one is actually telling me to do it.  "You've got this far.  You've rearranged yourself so that you'll never be this again.  Keep going.  Keep growing."  He probably doesn't care.  If he were here to speak with me he would ask, "Sooo...do you get a lot of girls now?"  I would then sit him down and fill him in on a lot of things.  Not just girls, but his future and my past in general.  But mostly about women.  I need to prepare him for the things that are about to happen to him.

Now, you take all of what I said, think about it for a half hour, then just forget about it and move on with life like you normally do.  But remember!  Be back here next week.  Surely there will be more luscious word gold to wade through.

Until then.