I spent 16 weeks training for a marathon this summer/autumn. I ran in scorching heat ad pouring rain, I had some digestive issues, and then I injured myself [while not running] two days before my big debut. An injury bad enough to get scratched on race day and cheer on my pals from the sidelines. That was fun, but I still need to do a marathon.
I’ve remained optimistic about finishing a marathon. Not really, friends. I’ve often worried that this injury and/or the time off will alter my running ability to the point that I won’t be able to run. My ankle was injured on November 3rd, so it isn’t fully healed. The good news is that I can start trying to run on it. If only I hadn’t gotten some sort of respiratory infection that led to a pneumonia diagnosis leading to pleurisy, I would be out running in this frigid weather to get my groove back. I’m so happy to not be constantly coughing from the pneumonia, but the pleurisy is painful. I feel as if I lost a jousting match and had the lance ends removed from poking out so nobody could see that it was more than a flesh wound. No idea why I would be jousting, but that’s not really the point here. It’s that I want to run and things keep getting in my way that I seriously can’t just ignore or work around to get in my exercise. At least when it was just my ankle, I could go swim at the gym. For some reason, I feel they’d frown upon me coughing my brains out or clutching my chest while doing cardio.
So, I have time to rest (not really my thing) and I have time to think. Last weekend, I spoke to my running buddy Jane over coffee. She told me about her plans for running in the coming year and I explained some of mine. I told her that I didn’t think I would be recovered enough to plan training in January for an April marathon and that I didn’t want to train in the winter to run in what could potentially warmer race day conditions. I am good at regulating when I’m cold. I have a hard time cooling down once I’m hot. She told me about her plans to run in the Chicago Marathon this October and how she’s going to raise money for diabetes for her entry. I went home and I started to research what I would do for my own marathon. My only plans for the coming year were really to recover and then train for a marathon, but I hadn’t put a lot of thought into anything different from the one I’d missed this year. The more I researched, I realized I could fund raise for entry. The day I saw my friends posting their acceptance letters into Chicago, I decided I needed to actually go through with it and plan to run that marathon. I have a teenager with Crohn’s disease, so I checked up on the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA). They have a team that runs Chicago! It was like I was meant to do it this way. I contacted CCFA for the info and was signed up within the day.
You know what that means? Yes you do. I’m collecting money with a $2000 goal for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America as part of my entry into the Bank of America Chicago Marathon 40th Anniversary. I will be running my first marathon after fundraising for a worthy cause. I’ll give you my link and probably insert the link into all of my entries until race day. I’ve done my homework on this charity and I am excited to help them educate people and to eradicate inflammatory bowel disease. So, join me on my new journey, will you? I’ll be healthy soon enough and then I’ll be doing a few different exercises to improve my overall strength to make my running better. Then, I’ll be training for my first marathon!
Thank you for reading! I hope that I’m reaching people that need to see encouragement or just someone you find you relate to. Please let me know if there are topics you’d like to see covered. I love feedback and comments. My fundraising link is: http://online.ccfa.org/goto/MomJennGoal262
Jenn's Journey 