To Middle America and Back

I crossed the finish line in Oklahoma long before many of my friends and family were awake. I travelled alone, ran and crossed the finish line. The latter two I did not do alone, I ran with strangers and quick friends and crossed with the cheering of a crowd that might as well been my family. Through the whole process I realized runners don't look like runners, we look like people, tall and short, thin and not so thin. We run and we don't necessarily run fast, maybe we run slow, but we run, we put on foot in front of the other understanding in some way or another that this is life. From the day we stagger to our feet we learn that one foot in front of the other moves us forward. This lesson grows into every other aspect of our lives. I ran on Sunday to say the way we get through the ugly parts of our lives is just that, with one weak and fumbling foot in front of the other. We have and will survive and the best way to honor our past, our legacy and our future is to put that foot in front of the other and just keep going. And while your at it, remember the number one rule of running according the marathoner behind me, "It's not how fast you finish, it's how you photograph. If you see a media camera, put your shoulders back, chin up and smile, then resume your running posture." The whole thing just makes me want to cry, cry tears of joy for finishing, for the families who stand there knowing you're running in someones honor, and for all the emotional and mental miles I've covered in the last 7 months.

Onward ho - San Fran here I come and maybe Seattle in between...

PS. I will be doing Oklahoma next year, but I sure hope and pray it won't be hotter and more humid than hell - temperature wise it was horrible. Event wise it was wonderful - go figure. And no, this isn't me in the photo.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/banjojones/3478135693/