I just got back to New York from an amazing weekend at the old school, and thanks to three days of nonstop merriment and mirth (let's stick with the euphemisms for now), tonight's 40-minute training run was a little more difficult than it probably ought to have been. Not that we ate and drank our way through New Haven or anything.
Celeste's entry about Jenn made me want to post a little about my own source of inspiration for this whole crazy enterprise: my mom. One of the things I love about Mom is the drive with which she turns ideas into reality. When she hit forty, she decided to rekindle some teenage dreams of athletic stardom and announced she was going to train for a marathon. A first go at the Disney race turned into a second and a third go. Our novice runner became a mentor, a team captain, and finally a coach. And a triathlete. And a certified triathlon coach. And then she took her abundant gifts and started sharing them with a most remarkable group of young people she pulled together from the student body of the high school at which she teaches. They became the first high school marathon team in New England and they're going strong for the second year in a row at Providence. A collective of nine newbies is now thirty-strong. I cannot wait to join them in May.
I'm running this race for myself (the old and the new Scotts), for Celeste, for those we've lost to cancer and those who are fighting with all they've got, and most of all, I'm running for Mom. She brought out the burgeoning athlete in the lazy schlub. For that - among many other things - I'll be forever grateful.
The Chaloff gang at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Jamie Chals kicked some ass.
GO JAMIE!!!
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