385 yards?

385 Yards

I love winter, I really do.  I think that the changing of the seasons is one of the reasons we love living in Vermont.  We have world class autumn foliage which gives way to a winter season that is just long and hard enough to substantiate incredible bragging rights to anyone other than penguins or polar bears.  With that said, last Monday I snapped.  I'd had enough of the endless need to bundle up in eight layers just to walk to the mailbox.  So, I threw caution to the wind and went out for a run in shorts and a tee shirt.  In my mind, I was imagining 75° temperatures and flat terrain.  Oh wait, it wasn't my imagination; I was in Florida last week.  And given the -20° weather I had left behind, and the -20° that I'd surely be returning to, I wanted to squeeze every last drop out of my ability to run in the warmer weather.  Unfortunately, my travel plans did not allow for my usual long-run on Sunday.  To my amazement, and perhaps with some disappointment, I was forced off of my sacred training schedule.  After all, I did the mathematical computations, and taking into account that a Boeing 737 aircraft is 129.5 feet long, it would have taken 489.26 laps to accomplish my scheduled 12 mile Sunday run while on my flight.  Surely the flight marshal would have tackled me if I had tried to run 489 laps up and down the airplane aisle (including swimming type flip-turns in the cockpit).  

A 12 mile run?  Wow, that's really something, especially when I consider the fact that just three years ago a three-mile run seemed like a long distance accomplishment.  When I ran my first four miles, I posted the accomplishment on Facebook.  I was proud of the accomplishment and was probably looking for accolades from my friends.  I mean, hey, this was something... I had run four miles! I recall doing the same for my first five-mile run, and then again at six miles.  At some point, I began to acknowledge to myself that I was indeed becoming a long distance runner and that I should probably stop posting these accomplishments online.  My distances just kept getting longer and longer.  Although, as I sit down to write this blog, I look back on my Facebook comments and now realize that I never really did lay off of running related posts. I seem to have found one for my first ten-mile route, my first race ever (the GMAA Labor Day 15k), and my first 1/2 marathon (the GMAA Green Mountain 1/2).  I look forward to the day that I'll be able to post about running 26.2 miles - that's how long a marathon is, which, if you're reading this post you already know.  However, I'd like to focus for a moment on the small little decimal 0.2 miles on the end of the number.  I recently read an article that referred to a marathon being 26 miles and 385 yards long.  As I sat on my flight to Florida, I thought about this 385 yard reference. One might think that it's some sort of cruel joke to run 26 miles and then need to do an extra couple hundred yards on top of that, but I'm thinking the opposite. If I can manage to successfully run the first 26 miles, I plan to thoroughly enjoy those last 385 yards. I hope that with each footfall, I can revel in the thought that I've completed my first marathon. At least that's my current plan, assuming that I can actually complete the first 26 miles.  And then, after reminding myself that 385 yards is just the equivalent of 8.92 Boeing 737's, I'll probably post the accomplishment on Facebook!

Fondly,

Greg