A few things you may not know about me:
- I am not a runner
Wait, seriously?! Why would I sign up to run 26.2 miles if the first thing I tell you about myself is that I am not a runner. Well its true. I’ve never run a race – not a 5k, 10k, fun run, etc. This marathon will be the first running bib number I’ll ever receive. I have on more than one occasion said to someone “Someone would need to chase me to get me to run, and even then I may just say that my time must be up and let them catch me”. But before you think you are just throwing your money away in donating to this effort, you should also know…
- I thrive on challenges
I once read a book called “Built to Last” that talked about setting ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goals’. It was a bit along the lines of the saying ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars’. Well that notion has stuck with me for a very long time. So I like to develop challenges for myself, simply to achieve them. My mom likes to tell people the story of when I was a baby that I would never toddle around learning to walk. I didn’t pull myself up on the corner of a table, try a step and then fall down. I was either going to walk completely and effortlessly or not at all. And so one day I just did. I know running a marathon is hard. Training is hard. Running is hard. So why this Big Hairy Audacious Goal?...
- Running a marathon is a bucket list item for me
I have always been immensely impressed by the feat of running a marathon. The time, the distance, the dedication and the pain that has to go into it all is, to me, one of those great lifetime milestones that I’ve always wanted to accomplish. I started running 2 months ago and as I’m 34 years old I just said to myself “it’ll never get easier than right now”. So I’m going for it. But why not just register for the thing, rather than run for a charity…
- Children’s Hospitals of Minnesota is an immensely great cause
I immediately knew I wanted to run for a charity when running my marathon and I can’t think of a more deserving cause than Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. I am a father of 3 and while I would honestly say we’ve been lucky in the health department, we had a fairly significant run-in with my son MJ and a slammed door on a finger which turned into 3 surgeries and a week at Children’s. There are so many kids that go through much harder challenges than running a marathon, and I want to run for their challenges as much as mine.
So I hope you can make a donation to my page and support Children’s Hospitals of Minnesota, but if you can’t, then I hope you follow my progress as I figure out how to move my legs across 26.2 miles of terrain in under 6 hours (I’m happy to share my progress with you if you ask, but I don’t want to be one of those runners that talks about nothing other than their training regimen, or what they’re eating or the powerbar of choice for the week). I’ll work to keep all those that support this cause in the loop on my progress and I’ll have a beer with anyone who wants to show up at the finish line on October 1st to watch me cross it.
