Musings of a Midnight Runner

Musings of a Midnight Runner

The Musings of a Marathon Runner
As a competitive runner I have always aspired to run a marathon. My greatest inspiration to achieve this goal is Ryan Hall. He inspired me to actually go out and achieve this goal after his fabulous performance at the 2008 Olympics Trials. Soon after watching the race I did some research to find a marathon I would be interested in running. Unfortunately, I found out that you have to be eighteen to take part in a race. So I would either have to wait four years or I would go out and do one by myself not too far into the future. I chose the latter.
Months had passed since I first aspired to run a marathon. It was one snowy day during Christmas break when I was going out for my weekly long run. I ran on a bike trail so I used it as an out and back course. In this case I was planning on running five miles out then five miles back. This would normally take me eighty minutes running at an effortless pace. I laced up my shoes and began my run.
Approaching the halfway mark of my run the thought popped into my head that I was already five miles out; it wouldn’t hurt to go a little further. As I continued my run I had thought about turning around at every mile mark but decided against it. As I approached the ten mile mark I decided that it would not be much of a difference if I went three more miles and turned around thirteen miles out, making the full length of the run twenty-six miles. I was on a mission from that point on; I was going to run a marathon.
Not long after the eleven mile mark the trail turned to solid ice. It forced me to shuffle as if I were a penguin while running to prevent myself from falling. At this point thoughts had crossed my head about whether to continue. But I made the choice to continue on. Those four miles I ran on the ice where the toughest of my life. It was a culmination of the miles I had already completed and the difficulty of running on the ice. After about forty minutes of...

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