The Fairy Tale, Part I

(This is the first installment in a 3 part post, click Part II or Part III to read on..) 


Fairy Tale Story Time:

Once upon a time, there was a young soccer player. She was dedicated to sports an team effort, but despite her drive, she was not one of the better players on the team. At this point, her older brother saw an opportunity. He, a strapping man about to have his first child with his new wife,  said, “Young sister, would you perhaps like to run a race with me?”

“What is a race? Running?” she replied.

“Yes, a running race. We can get our other sister to do it with us! It shall be fun.”

“What joy! Ok, I’m in,” the young soccer player said, unknowing of what she had just signed up to do.

“Promise to do it with me?”

“Promise.”

“Final answer?” he asked again, tentatively.

“Yes,” she said. “How long is the race?”

“26.2 miles.”

----

The rest is history.

Yes, I ran my first marathon just a few months after I turned 18. It was rough, fatiguing, made me sore, and was the most incredible experience of my life. I ran it with my brother and sister.

Since then, my running habits come in waves: Sometimes I’ll train for a bit and do a 10K on Thanksgiving, sometimes do the random 5K, I trained for a couple half marathons with my sister. “It’s what we do,” I figured, “bonding.”

This past year, with so much stress in moving to China, from China, into a new area, into a new job, and trying to stay sane through all of it, I needed something to keep me focused and give me some stability. Running would do it.

I signed up for the Westchester half marathon with a couple things plaguing me:

1)   Would I be able to train, all by myself? Without the support of others?

2)   Would I be too stressed to train at all?

3)   What happens on the days that I’m tired, where’s the motivation to run 6 miles when you’ve had 5 hours of sleep the night before?

4)   Would I be able to do it?

Some would think of me as a masochist (signing up and paying 50 bucks registration to put myself through the hell of running 13.1 miles). Personally, I like to refute the fact that I could be a masochist, and reply that I like challenges.

I didn’t know I could run 26.2 miles.

I didn’t know whether or not I could learn Chinese.

I didn’t know I would cry during Harry Potter VI ?!

                        Sometimes, though, one just needs to leap with neither regard nor consideration for how long the fall will be or how deep the water is at the bottom…

(Proceed to Part II)