14 Miles

Micah and I ran 14 miles this weekend. (Micah is my running partner who is crazily running the Cleveland Marathon one week before his wedding). I like the 14 mile point because you are more than half way there. And you can tell yourself, "Hey, I've run more than a half marathon!" Which, I think is pretty impressive.

I slept in a little on Saturday before we ran and we didn't start until 9:30 am. Plus my hips are really bothering me, so I stretched for a good hour. About halfway into our run, it started to rain and then at mile 8, it started ice raining, which is a lot of fun -- let me tell you. Then, my special technologically designed running shirt literally rubbed a mole off my neck -- lol. Who needs to pay to see a dermatologist when you can just run your moles off?

As we were running, I thought back to last August when I ran 14 miles outside of my parents' farm while preparing for the Columbus Marathon. It was during my local county fair -- the Canfield Fair -- and yes, it is the best county fair in the country -- the largest county fair East of the Mississippi.

On that run, I ran by the fair ground and all the way into Canfield proper and to the other side of Canfield township. Running this long (and I am pretty slow) gives you time to think. I was thinking about all the food I was going to eat at the fair (of course), of how crazy it was that I was running to basically to my high school boyfriend's house (and back to my parents' house) -- which was in a different school district and about what a good friend had said to me while I was in DC the weekend before.

She asked me if I was running for something...I had decided that I was going to run for people's issues that they were concerned about -- the people that I love and who have supported me over the years. For those of you who don't know...the past couple years have been a bit rough -- to say the least. So, for the Columbus Marathon I ran for all those people's issues -- one mile dedicated to each one.

But for the Cleveland Marathon, I wanted to do more than raise awareness and that is why I am running to raise money for the Joliba Trust. There is a blog post below about what they are working on. And on my first blog post, I've written why I am supporting them, so I hope you'll read about this. I also hope you'll keep checking out this blog -- I plan to update it weekly about my training. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for this by clicking on the orange box next to the website address above.

This is the first time I've ever written about myself in a public way...so this is kind of weird for me. I promise I will get better. Please feel free to comment! I will try to make this funnier and more interesting!

k