There are no miracles in the marathon

The marathon doesn't care if your dog died or if it's your birthday. It doesn't care if you think you should be a X:XX marathoner. It doesn't care if you trained for five months only to find yourself injured or sick. It doesn't care if the weather is 20 degrees above normal. It doesn't care about your hopes or aspirations. It doesn't care if you've sacrificed beer and burgers and fries for a few less pounds.

The marathon doesn't care about the dark days - days of changing into your running clothes after work only to decide after a few painful strides that running today would make things worse rather than better; days when you give up because the heat of the summer makes your planned workout impossible; days when you know after only a few miles of a race that today will not be your day.

The marathon doesn't care except for the hundreds of thousands of people supporting you along the way; except for the well wishes from friends and family; except for the deep bonds made with the few members of your tribe who truly understand. The people who understand dodging cars, listening to unoriginal comments from adolescents, waking up way too early to beat the heat for a two hour run witnessed by nobody except for the trail and your watch.

There are no miracles in marathons unless you count the blind and lame running free. There are no miracles in marathons except for a society increasingly marked by obesity, sloth, and selfishness celebrating tens of thousands of people committing to pushing themselves to their physical limits and helping others along the way.

The marathon might not hand out miracles like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny but marathons provide an opportunity for the everyday miracles that we take for granted to be observed and recognized.

That's why even though I had a rough day yesterday, I know I'll eventually be back for more. Eventually I'll look at a calendar and plan six months of training. But for now I drink a few strong ales and rest. For now, it's over.

Runner tracking for Chicago

There are a few ways you can track runners' progress this Sunday. If you want to have the marathon send you text messages you can sign up here. I'm sure they will also have a web based tracker on the site as well. Just remember that these trackers aren't 100% timely or accurate. With 40,000 people running the system can sometimes be slow.

Week of Chicago

Although my hamstring/glute issue went the wrong direction - which led me to more time on the elliptical and stationary bike - I still should be good to go next Sunday. I'm going to start up a ibuprofen regimine again tomorrow. I expect it will work as well as it did before Philly.

Obviously this is not what I envisioned 6 months ago - I don't want to come limping into Chicago after six weeks of dealing with an injury. But Philly went pretty well - and I've kept up my cardio on the elliptical and bike, but I won't know how things are going to go until I get out there.

On the positive side - the weather should be nice and cool. I'm planning on writing a few more posts this week about Chicago and the marathon. Being injured is no excuse for being boring.