Marathon

When I’m not mortgage planning I am, like all of us, busy doing other things. After some debate, I decided to include a section in my blog that talked about some other area of life I find interesting at the moment. Call it a personal touch. Since relating to people is a part of the job I really enjoy, this is an attempt to relate on a non-mortgage level.

These days, I’m into running. I have no idea why because the only running I ever did growing up was laps before or after practice, which were always a chore to be endured. In my twenties I would sometimes do some turn-over-a-new-leaf-and-get-in-shape running but the first day skipped was also always the last in the string, and life would soon return to non-running normal. Then my thirties hit and with a busy job, young kids and no more team sports on the calendar my clothes started shrinking.

But running-to-get-in-shape had never worked for me in the past and at this point, weight loss, which has been slow in coming by the way, was just a bi-product. I think the real reason I’ve been running about 20 to 25 miles a week now for the past 10 months has been a combination of Toronto’s fabulous and hugely underrated running trails (thank you Jane Jacobs), the fact that my best friend Paul had caught the running bug a few months before me, and of course, the goal.

Growing up I always planned to run a marathon at least once in my life. It’s easy to decide that when you’re young and you feel like you have forever to do it, but by my mid-thirties my window was closing about as fast as my clothes were shrinking, so it was now or never. We ran the Chili half marathon in March (loved it) and we’re running the Mississauga half in May. The moment of truth will occur on September 26, 2010, at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront marathon. It’s a flat course, supposedly one of the “faster” marathons, which means “easier” in runner-speak. Whatever. It’s still 26 miles and 385 yards of forward momentum.

That’s it for now. Tomorrow is a running day and I’m turning in early…