Marathon Training and Updates

Finally getting back to running after taking quite a lot of time off so I finally have something to write about again. I began my 24 week training plan this Monday and will be doing 43 miles a week for the first few weeks (then I ahve no idea what my coach has planned for me). I have forgotten what it feels like to be running hard several days in a row. My shortest runs are 6 miles with long runs of 9 for now and 1 day off a week. I am just glad to be running again and hope I can keep it up til the marathon.

I don't have too much to write about, but thought I would just go ahead and take this chance to give a few updates.

Finally Running Again!!!

It has been a very, very long time since my last post. This is not because I have not wanted to write anything. I simply have not had anything to write about. My last marathon was on February 19. Up until 2 days ago, I had run once since then totaling a whole 4 miles. That is the longest break I have had since I was injured my freshman year of high school and had to sit out 3 1/2 months. People were always really surprised when I would tell them I was taking some time off. Yes, I was partially just being lazy, but there was a bigger reason than that.

I was burned out. I had done too much, too soon, with too little training. To put it simply, I ran myself into the ground. Looking back on it, I'm just happy not to be injured. I ran 4 marathons in 4 months with very minimal training (if you could even say I did that much). Insanity at its finest. I knew something was wrong when I was sick to my stomach the night before my last marathon and had been dreading it the whole week before. Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic marathon gold medalist once said "You have to forget your last marathon before you try another. Your mind can't know what's coming." I had read this before but never quite understood it. I now know exactly what he meant. I was simply doing too much. I had to take a break and get back to running for the right reasons. I love running because it is a passion of mine. But the stress of so many marathons without preparing my body beforehand was taking a toll on my body and mind. As soon as I stopped loving it, it becomes a miserable task. By taking a long break, I allowed my body to recover and to get back to the reason I run - for the love of the pain and the accomplishment that comes with finishing any run.

Two days ago, I was studying for finals and needed a break to clear my mind. Unknowingly, I was starting my marathon training. During that run, I felt a sensation I hadn't felt since high school. I was enjoying myself and actually felt good running on a normal training run. I went running the following day. Lemme tell you, I hate being outta shape. It was miserable. Muscles were sore that I didn't even know could hurt. I was running slower than I had run in a very long time. It was a very tough run... and I loved it! That is what I took so long off for. The love of the pain that comes when your body is screaming from soreness and you push it harder and faster anyways. I am back. The passion of running is finally back and I am ready to run!

After that first run, I sat down and figured out all the dates for the upcoming year. I am very detailed when it comes to running and planning everything out. So here is what I have to look forward to (and anyone who actually reads this can look forward to reading about as well):

12 weeks to get in shape

July 30: beginning of 24 week training program (hopefully under the brilliant guidance of Coach Devlyn Lovell)

Jan. 13: Chevron Houston Marathon

50 Miler sometime in the spring

By choosing to run the Houston Marathon, I will have to find a different 50 miler to run than originally planned. I will need more time to recover and add more distance to my training. I have not found one yet (haven't really looked much), but I hope to run the 50 miler towards the end of March or some time in April. I know it is still a long way away, but from past experience, it comes up on you much quicker than you can imagine.

Having never really trained properly for a marathon, I am excited to actually give it a try this time. I know I have said this before every marathon, but I have seen the effects when I don't train, and don't want to be in that spot again. I have some very lofty goals for myself and realize that if I want to ever reach my peak in running, I will have to get some self-discipline in regards to training. I am still very young for distance running and have years until I even begin to near my peak. By hopefully gaining the discipline now, it will be much easier to accomplish at least some of my goals.

I know this isn't all that exciting of a post to read, but just thought I'd write something since it has been awhile. I hope to start writing more often now that I am finally training again. This next year is going to be a fun time. It will be difficult, but I am ready for a challenge again. 

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this. I do write it as motivation for myself, but I love to share my running with anyone who will listen. Thanks for taking time out of your day to read this.

And as always, I know that it is God who has given me the talent to run. I have done nothing to deserve it and would be wasting a gift from God if I did not use it. He has given me this gift, and I will continue to run knowing this and being thankful every day that God has allowed me the ability to run.

The Science Behind the Mile

This post was inspired by a friend who graciously gave me a ride home from campus earlier tonight. The topic of running came up. My friend was surprised when I mentioned how much strategy and science there is behind racing specific distances. This post is an attempt to explain the science I have learned to race with through the mile. I know there are others out there, but my own biased opinion is that this one is the best. I apologize now for anything that I fail to explain clearly.

High schools in Texas race a fake mile. We actually run a 1600m race which is technically a little bit longer than a mile but is much simpler than trying to get the conversion correct down to the inch, wait centimeter, wait... screw the conversions. That is why we race a 1600m "mile". Outside of Texas, and throughout the rest of the world, the common "mile" race is 1500m long. But we are Texas and everything is bigger in Texas, including our mile :)

Austin Marathon -- 4 Marathons in 4 Months = Complete

Let me begin this by letting everyone who reads this know that I absolutely HATE hills! I completely understand why John the Baptist preached "Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low..." Luke 3:5. This obviously points out that Jesus very strongly disliked hills and John the Baptist was trying to help Him out a bit and get rid of the hills and mountains so Jesus wouldn't have to deal with them. Apparently they forgot about the New World (probably because it hadn't been discovered yet) and never got around to removing the hills from Austin.

Anyways, to the real point of this post. This past Sunday (Feb. 19) my brother and I ran the Austin Marathon with a priest friend, Fr. Michael.

Upcoming Plans

Ok, as promised at the end of my last post, here is what I am planning between now and the 50 miler next February. As I will be posting this to fb and I get more comments on my posts there than on this site, please feel free to offer suggestions of other runs/races I should consider that are not included on either site.

So, the first thing I have to do is finish my 4 marathons in 4 months. The final marathon in this journey will be
Feb. 19 which is now 24 days away. This will be an interesting marathon because it is the first one I will be repeating. Every other marathon I have done was done for the first time. I'm hoping my little remembered knowledge of the course will help. One thing I am definitely not looking forward to is the hills. Being from San Antonio, I used to get plenty of training in on hills and loved them. They always gave me an edge over my competition in races. Unfortunately, after moving to college station, I realized that it is COMPLETELY flat here. I have not been able to find one good hill to train on. Austin being known as a hilly course, which it is, is not going to be a good thing having not been able to train on hills (not that I'm training much anyways).

After the marathon, I plan to come back and run 2 5Ks 2 weeks later. One is supporting a pro-life organization on March 3 and the other is a race I want to try and win on March 4. I plan to use the first one to gauge where I am on my pace. I know how I used to run a 5K, but it's been over 2 years since I've run one and I'm not used to racing fast. I'll probably put in some time on the track before my marathon to strengthen my legs for the marathon and get some speed for the 5Ks.

On June 25, I will begin my training for my next marathon and the 50 miler which is the end of all this and the beginning of my road into ultra running. I will be running the Bryan/College Station Marathon on December 4 with the help of my high school coach. He says I should be able to run a 2:45. I say he's insane (sorry coach if you ever read this). But, he's never steered me wrong before so I'll listen to what he says and do what I'm told. After that marathon, I will have two months to recover and prepare for the 50 miler. I will have to put in at least one 30 mile training run at some point, if not multiple runs of at least this length.

As for between the 2 5Ks at the beginning of March and the beginning of training in June, I don't have any specific plans. I am looking for runs that would be fun to do and hope to find a few more 5Ks to throw in there. I really miss the speed and tactics of a real race (it's a little hard to race a marathon when you are still trying to figure out why you continue to subject yourself to the pain). If anyone knows of any 5Ks nearby or any interesting runs they would suggest running, please let me know. I'd love to take a look into them and see what I can do.

God bless each and everyone of you who reads this. May He watch over you and protect you in all that you do.

Houston Marathon (3 of 4)

It's been awhile since I've written anything. Not because I've been super busy or anything, but more because of the lack of stuff to write about. I kinda took a break from running for most of Christmas break. Funny, because I was planning to run a marathon the last weekend of the break. Oh well. Lack of training didn't stop me from running.

Just over a month after my brother and I finished our second marathon together, we ran The Chevron Houston Marathon. It was an awesome run! With the lowest amount of training I have ever put in to a marathon, I was able to run my second fastest time of 5 marathons. Although, I was still over 15 minutes off my PR, I was really happy to have finished with such a good time.

For anyone who has read any of my past posts, if you are expecting horror stories like the ones from the last 2 marathons, you will be disappointed. The weather was perfect for running. Anyone who likes the crazy weather up north may have thought it was a little warm, but for this Texas boy, it was perfect!

So I'll go ahead and give a brief overview of how the run went and then move on to what I have planned next. The marathon started at 7am and my brother and I went off with the goal of running a sub 3:30 and not stopping. I was able to do this in both of my first marathons, but hadn't been able to finish a marathon without stopping in the past 2 due to trying to stay with others who were hurting. Just a quick note, a 3:30 is right around an 8 minute/mile pace.

While we were waiting in the corral for the race to start, I told my brother that I was going to hit the wall between mile 15 and 16. I had run enough marathons and knew my body well enough to be pretty certain of this with my lack of training. We planned to go out just below an 8 min/mile pace to build a buffer to allow us to slow down in the later miles of the marathon and still finish at our expected time. Our first mile was 7:44. At one point in this first mile while my brother and I were both trying to keep the other from pushing too hard too early, I made the comment that we were at an awkward pace. For those who run long distances often, you know what I'm talking about. We all have our favorite paces that we can run at for an extended amount of time. And then there are those awkward paces just between our favorite paces where we just never feel comfortable. We feel like we must either slow down or speed up, but we can't continue at the current pace. Well, anyways, apparently 7:44 is one of those awkward paces for me, or at least was on that day. So, not wanting to slow down, we sped up a bit. The next 8 miles were all run within a range of 7:29-7:31. Talk about consistency!!!

We dropped down to a below a 7:20 pace for a mile or two after that. The reason for doing so you might ask? There was a little boy who was running the half who was passing us at that point. I was blown away because he looked like he wasn't even a teenager yet. I wanted to ask him how old he was so I picked it up to stay near him as I tried to find a way to ask a complete stranger how old he was without seeming like a creeper. I didn't want to throw him off his race though and knew I needed to slow down so I eventually decided to just to get his number off his bib and find out how old he was later by looking up his results. He ended up being 12 years old and ran a great time for being so young!

After our little adventure with trying to learn how old the kid was, we settled back down to our pace from before and kept running. When we hit mile 15 I started to feel the miles adding up on me and at 15.25 I hit the wall. It wasn't like a sudden rush of pain or anything, but it was definitely necessary to start slowing the pace if I wanted to keep going on. We started to slow down the pace and ended up around 8 min/mile for a bit. Around mile 19 or 20 (they all run together), the 3:20 pace group caught up to us. My brother had trained a lot for this marathon and was feeling strong. We decided to pick up our pace and try to stay with the group. After about a mile though, I had to slow down again. I had around 6 miles left and had a 10 minute lead on the 3:30 pace group. I wasn't really worried about not making my time, and decided to try to finish with as little pain as possible.

My brother wanted to finish below 3:20 though. Having trained much more than I had, it wouldn't be fair for me to try and hold him back, especially when I wasn't injured at all and was only slowing down to be more comfortable. I have no doubt that if I was in any type of pain, he would have gladly slowed down and given up the race to stay with me and pull me through. But I wasn't in pain and wasn't gonna need to be pulled through the last few miles. Knowing he still had more to give, I told him that I was going to slow down because I hadn't trained enough and knew I needed to slow the pace, but told him to keep going. I know he felt bad about leaving me (we finished the 2 previous marathons at the exact same time down to a 100th of a second), but he needed to have a good race and this was a perfect day to do it at.

So he ran off and dropped down to below a 7:30 pace for the last few miles and finished at 3:17 something. I trudged along, even putting in a 9:36 25th mile, but was able to finish strong. I ran the last .2 miles at a sub 6:30 pace was a dead sprint for me at the moment. I finished the marathon 8 minutes after my brother did with a time of 3:25:sumthin. My legs were shot from the last sprint I decided to put in, so after crossing the finish line, I stopped and hunched over for a second to give my legs a break. Then I got a huge helping of humility.

As I straightened up, I looked to my right and saw yet another young guy who had done the run that morning, but this kid ran the full marathon. I was blown away at how young he was, and having just finished within seconds from where I did, I had to ask how old he was. This kid was 13 years old and had just finished a full marathon in less than 3:26!!! He's a beast!!! I would never have even considered running a marathon at that age! I remember a day in 8th grade (age 14) at cross country practice when my brother and I ran 4 miles and thought we had conquered the world. This kid just ran 26.2 miles at a younger age!!! That puts everything I have done to shame lol. I have no idea who the kid was, or anything about him other than his age, but he is my role model.

Anyways...

After the marathon, I found my brother and we headed back to College Station for the start of the Spring semester. I had finished my 5th marathon, running my 2nd fastest time with the littlest amount of training (I do not condone running marathons without training), my brother had finished his 3rd marathon with a PR of close to 10 minutes if not more, and we had taken one step closer to completing our 4 marathons in 4 months journey. Houston was the 3rd of 4 marathons. We are now 1 month and 2 days away from our our 4th and final marathon, The Livestrong Austin Marathon. We will be traveling to Austin soon and hopefully, I will be in better shape for it. I have some exciting plans after that, but nothing set in stone yet. I will write another post soon about some of my plans, but it's off to class now. Don't wanna be late.

Never forget that everything we do is a gift from God. My ability to run is not from anything I did myself. Rather, God has blessed me with an awesome gift and I am just beginning what I hope to be an amazing adventure that will take a lifetime to see just how far I will be able to push myself with the grace of God, and his angels always carrying me through the hardest parts of my runs. God bless everyone who takes the time to read this. Never forget how blessed you really are.

White Rock Misery

I am finally getting around to writing about my experiences and thoughts from the marathon I ran this past Sunday. I will be blatantly honest. It was the WORST run of my life. There were many great experiences on the way and I was able to learn a lot, but it was a completely miserable run due mostly to weather conditions.

For those of you who are looking for a very brief description on what happened at the marathon, I would suggest not continuing on. I am going to just write out all the things I feel are worth typing and have no idea how long that may go on for. For those of you who wish to hear the long version of the race, here you go...

Training hard quote

I just found this part below in an article I was reading on the internet about training. Ok, so I really was briefly reading over the different subject titles to see if I wanted to read the article and came across something interesting, but that's close enough to reading the article right? Anyways... here it is:


RED-LINING
Top marathoner's talk about "red-lining," a term borrowed from auto racers. The red line is the mark on the tachometer of a high performance automobile where if you consistently rev your engine higher, it will disintegrate. Whoom! $125,000 worth of junk. Red-lining in running is pushing your body in training right to the point of self-destruction, achieving maximum efficiency, training the necessary miles to run P.R.s, but not so much that injury, or staleness, occurs. The red line for one of Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper's fitness joggers, interested only in good health, is 15 weekly miles. Dr. Cooper, the author of the best-selling Aerobics and subsequent books on the subject, suggests that if you run further than 15 miles a week, you're doing it for reasons other than fitness.
Someone whose goals extend beyond fitness to performance might red-line--after a gradual build-up--at 30 miles. Or 45. Or 60. Most often, these limits are physiological in nature. There's a Catch-22 in red-lining. You have to train hard to be able to train hard. But if you train too hard, you no longer will be able to train hard. Confused? It's simply that too many miles too soon result in injuries: strained tendons and ligaments, stress fractures, chronically dead legs, what commercial advertisers might label "tired blood."
- http://www.ultrunr.com/buildupmiles.html

My favorite part, and the reason I am posting this, is towards the end when the author talks about the Catch-22 in red-lining. I'm not sure why I like it so much but I started laughing when I read the line "You have to train hard to be able to train hard. But if you train too hard, you no longer will be able to train hard".

Oh well, now back to the rest of the article.

All Glory to God and thanksgiving for the gift of running.

Marathon this Sunday

This Sunday I will be running the Dallas Whiterock Marathon with my brother and a friend. This will be the 2nd of 4 marathons I am running in the span of 16 weeks. To be completely honest though, I haven't run very much since the last marathon. I guess I will see what it feels like to run 26.2 miles without any long runs within the past month.

Fortunately, the plan is to go slow. As of right now, although race day always throws curve balls, the plan is to just enjoy ourselves and finish the run. I am really looking forward to this marathon as it will be my fourth, my brother's second (his first was MCM earlier this year where he got injured pretty bad) and our friend's first official marathon, although he is a great runner and may have already run a marathon - or close to it - just because, at some point in time.

Hopefully, we stick to this plan. Although anytime my brother and I are in a run together it automatically becomes a race. His first marathon earlier this year is a great example. We ran the MCM this past October together and were planning on running around a 6:45-7:15 pace. We came through the first 5K at just under 20 min putting us at a 6:15 pace. It was at this point I realized it was going to be a difficult run. Long story short, my brother (having never run a marathon before) decided he felt good and continued to pick up the pace. I slowed down and dropped back. At one point my brother hit a 5:45 mile if not faster than that which is quite impressive for a marathon. Unfortunately, he ended up hitting the wall early because of the hills at the beginning of the course. He pulled both his calves within the frist 10 miles and I caught him at the half way point. He finished that marathon in more pain than I could imagine, but he finished. My pride for my borther finishing that race cannot be put in words. He ran 16 miles with both his calves pulled, compensating by changing his stride and further injuring himself, and still ran a sub 3:30 marathon. He ran through more pain that I can imagine.

Anyways, I hope we are better able to stick to the plan this time around and just have fun.

I am finally beginning to get used to the thought that it is almost normal to run 26.2 miles just for fun. I think this just goes to show how crazy I truly am. Many people hear the word marathon and run for the hills (ironic how fast they run to get away from the thought of running long distances). I love watching people's faces when I tell them I have run multiple marathons. I honestly am one who believes that almost anyone is physically capable of running a marathon. True, some might need a lot more training than others (I am lucky and can get by without much training although that will have to change for the 50 miler), but I still think almost anyone could complete a marathon.

It is all a mental thing. If a person is able to break the mental barrier telling them that 26.2 miles is an impossibly long run and they just can't do it, they would be surprised to see how much fun it is to complete a marathon. Running has always been a mind game for me. If you can trick your mind into thinking you can accomplish something, you most likely will.

I think I'm gonna have to eventually put up a post just trying to explain what goes on in my mind during a run, because I approach running with the idea that 90% of any run is completed in the mind, and only 10% is the actual physical doing of the run. This of course assumes that you have done the proper training and the goal is reasonable. I in no way mean to say that if someone wants to run a 4 minute mile but has never broken 8 minutes, they will simply cut their time in half by just believing it. But if that person's goal is to run a 7:30 mile and they are willing to put in the time to train and truly believe they can do it, they I am willing to bet they are successful.

Alright well that is all for now. I will be putting up a post after the marathon this Sunday. Hopefully I am able to report about how successful it is and how great of a time we all had. I would like to thank all those who support me in my craziness of running and those who will be running with me this weekend.

As always, all Glory to God who has given me the ability to run. I thank the Lord each day for this gift He has blessed me with. May He protect all the runners out there this weekend and keep us safe and injury free.

Running Background

I am beginning this blog as I begin to prepare to run a 50 miler. How I came to be here, sitting down starting a blog with the idea of running 50 miles at once is a story that would take a lifetime to tell. Instead I will fill you in on the basics and hopefully give you a look into what could possibly possess a 20 year old college student to attempt such a run. Some of what is written below is also in the About Me on the right, but I hope this gives more detail into how I came to where I am now.

I remember sitting in the car with my mom as she dropped me off for school one morning when I was in the 5th grade. I saw some people who had just finished running that morning. I don't remember exactly what went through my mind, but somehow I got the idea that I wanted to be one of those people. For some odd reason, I thought it would be fun to wake up super early and go run multiple miles 3 times a week at 6am. To this day, I'm not sure what caused this idea, I just know it was there.

So when the summer before 6th grade rolled around and I was finally old enough to join our school's cross country (xc) team, I went out for tryouts. I remember that first day of tryouts. My very first time ever running "long distance". Looking back, it couldn't have been more than 1 1/2 or 2 miles total that day, but boy did it feel like a lot. During that first run though, I knew I had found my passion. I have been in love with running since that very first day and my love only continues to grow each day.

I don't remember most of those middle school days, but there a few memories that stick out very clearly in my mind. My favorite one has to do with one morning when we did a timed run during my 7th or 8th grade year. This was a lot different for us because we were used to doing specific distances. At that time, the most I had ever run was close to 3 miles and thought I was tough stuff for having done that. Well, on that day, because it was a timed run, my brother and I (my little brother has been the greatest running partner in the world and will doubtlessly be mentioned more in future posts) decided to go out kinda fast. The loop around the campus of our middle school was supposed to be about a 1/2 mile. That morning we ended up running 8 laps. We both thought we were the coolest people to ever walk the earth. I remember thinking I had just run the longest run of my life and couldn't believe I had actually completed a 4 mile run.

This memory is especially special to me now, because looking back, I was always pushing myself. I always wanted to run farther. Even now, running 4 marathons in 16 weeks isn't enough for me. I had to find something harder, something more punishing. If you had told me on that day that I would one day be planning to run 50 miles I probably would have died right then thinking of how impossible that distance is. Yet here I am.

After middle school, I kept running and joined my high school xc team. There are so many memories and great stories from those years that I will save them for later when I have nothing better to post on the blog. I will however mention here the person who changed everything about me as a runner. My sophomore year of high school we got a new coach. He was much different than our previous coach and always seemed to have some reason or other to yell at me. Everyone says he loved me, but from my perspective as one of his runners, I definitely never felt that love. He did however, make me the runner I am today. He took the amateur runner who knew almost nothing other than "run as fast as you can til it hurts and then keep running" and taught me to think like a runner, race smart, and to love running more than ever before. He is one of my role models and has had a huge influence on my life. I hope to get his help in training for my 50 miler and also help on setting a marathon PR on the way.

As I went through high school, I began to look at longer races (the 5Ks we ran in xc were just too short to test my limits as a runner). I loved the speed of the mile, but wanted to see what my body could handle. So, my freshman year of high school, I ran my first half marathon. I ran my 2nd and 3rd in the two following years and hoped to run a marathon my senior year of high school. However my coach told me if I ever tried running a marathon while he was still my coach, he would never let me race again. That was enough to keep me away from anything longer than a marathon until after graduation.

After graduating high school, I left town to attend college. To my coach's disappointment (I'm positive he is still upset at me for wasting my potential) I chose not to run competitively in college. However this did not mean I was done running. No longer under my coach's supervision, I set my sights on completing my first marathon. I completed my first marathon on November 14, 2010. Within minutes of having finished, I was already planning my next one. I had found an even deeper love with running than ever before. It was a new way to test my limits, push myself til I felt I could go no farther, and to prove to myself that I can do anything I want. After completing my 2nd marathon on February 20, 2011, I decided I needed to make things a little harder for myself. So, I began planning to run 4 marathons in the span of 16 weeks. I begin this blog right in the middle of those 4 marathons. I completed the first of the 4 on October 30, 2011 and will run the second of the 4 in one week on December 4, 2011.

Over this past summer, knowing I was going to be doing 4 marathons in 4 months, I knew that if I accomplished this, I would have to find something new to test myself. Being a college student, I don't have the funds to run more marathons than this in a given year. Since I cannot increase the number of marathons, I figured I only had one other choice. Increase the distance. So over this past summer I began looking into ultras. I had heard a lot about different runs before, but now began to take it more seriously as I looked into possible runs.

So this brings us to present day. A week ago, I was lying in bed and could not sleep. Being the runner I am, I reached over to my bookshelf and grabbed a book with different people's accounts of running through the wall in ultramarathons (title and author to come when I can get back to the book). This got me thinking about how I planned to challenge myself next. Reading that book, I realized that these people had been exactly where I wanted to be. They had done the impossible. They had all done what their bodies told them they couldn't. They had pushed through unbelievable pain, suffering, and injuries on pure will power and adrenaline. Right then and there, I knew there was my next challenge. I tossed the book back onto the bookshelf and grabbed my laptop to immediately begin searching for nearby 50 milers I could run in a year or so. That night, I made up my mind. I was actually going to do it. I was really going to run 50 miles. The boy who thought he was the toughest guy ever for completing 4 miles in middle school was now going to try yet again to push his body farther than imaginable.

Many people have asked me over the years (I feel really old saying that considering I'm still in college) why I run or various questions related to that. I have a quote at the top of this blog that I think begins to express my thoughts on why. But its even deeper than that for me. I run to push myself. I run to test myself. I run to see if I can accomplish what most would never dream of. I run to feel the pain. I run because God gave me the gift of two working legs and I plan to use them to their full extent in His glory.

You cannot fully understand who I am as a runner If you do not understand that all my strength comes from the Lord. I am a proud Catholic that understands it is a wonderful gift to be able to walk or run, especially the distances that I run. Although I often take this for granted, I do stop every once in awhile to thank God for this gift and offer up a prayer for those who cannot do all the things I am capable of because of God's grace. No matter how great of a feat I am capable of, I know that it really is not my own accomplishment, but God's. Without Him, I would not even exist. Therefore, I do not take the glory for any of the successes I have, but instead place all of them at God's feet as my gift to Him in thanksgiving for His gift of running to me.