This has a whole new meaning when you put your body through something it wasn't made to do: marathon training. I wasn't an athlete, which you might have read about here and here. But doing a marathon is a whole new story. With the half marathon, I trained lightly ran 8 and then ran 13.1 with no pain. Marathons (26.2 miles) aren't that nice to you.
I had gotten pretty proud of myself doing minimal effort, no stretching and never needing to walk about 3 months in and up to 15 miles. I bragged. I was awesome. Sheese. How hard can this be if I the-girl-who-screamed-when-riding-her-bike-up-the-hill-at-age-5-was-too-hard can do it. But, I was knocked down pretty fast.
A month ago a pain started creeping up in my knee, I pushed through it -- bad idea. And, it kept me from running on it for over a month. I went to Athletico, and got a free visit (it was awesome) And she asked, do you stretch? No. Have you been doing your cross training. No. Well, that's probably why your body is hurting. Dang it. Since then I have been following the rules.
I had gotten super frustrated after 3 months of 5:45 am runs all summer long, to get this far and not be able to do it. Lots of tears, lots of prayers, until I realized that maybe the Lord wanted me to realize that my pride had gotten in the way. That I wanted the glory to be for ME. By golly I sure thought I deserved it. Until I was able to realize that HE is the one who gets the credit, I shouldn't be running.
He was good to me today. WE did 20 miles together. It's the Lord, it's not me, and I am thankful that he gave me some grace to do it.
Lastly, and most importantly -- we're running for a great cause called RISE International. They build schools in Angola to help fight poverty. We're way behind on our fundraising efforts and we'd love to have you on our team supporting us in this way. Or, you can just cheer for us and our other teammates in our bright yellow shirts on marathon day! If your interested in giving, you can here: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/chenery/TeamRISE2011
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