Dear Reader,
(CAUTION: THIS CAN GET A BIT SAPPY IN PLACES. FEEL FREE TO CALL ME A TOOL AND FOCUS ON THE HUMOR…LOL)
(I’m writing this entry because the website is asking me to describe what this blog is all about. So I’ll add this to the “About” section of the blog afterward….but I wanted to share it with all of you first…)
My blog – “Built for Comfort, Not Speed” – tries (sometimes in vain) to document my training for the 2010 – 2011 marathon season, with a specific focus on prepration for the 2010 ING New York City Marathon scheduled for Sunday, November 7th. I’m attempting to blend some simple training ideas, humor and a bit of motivation to my readers through an honest, self-depreciating style of writing. My goal is to motivate others to select and achieve their own goals, regardless of whether it be running a marathon or simply getting into shape. It doesn’t matter what the goal is: the message I’m trying to send is that it is important to HAVE goals and to apply yourself the best you can to attain them. Challenge yourself. Once in a while it’s OK to bite off what appears to be more than you can chew.
I’m not a very fast runner by any means – I truly am built for comfort, not speed. As you might have read so far (and as you’ll continuously notice as this blog matures), I make tons of dumb mistakes of various shapes and sizes. I make the same mistakes over and over again. I make mistakes that even make first time marathoners shake their heads, roll their eyes, and say aloud “you cannot be serious – you actually did……THAT?” But even though I make tons of idiotic miscues, I have finished every marathon that I’ve started (including the 2007 Chicago Marathon, which turned into a “Fun Run” after 300 people collapsed in the heat and 1 died on the course) – and finishing the race means I acheived my goal.
The one thing that I want you, the reader, to take away from this blog is the simple fact that there is no such thing as impossible when it comes to human achievement – there are just varying degrees of diffculty. One of my heros, Walt Disney, once said that “it’s pretty fun, doing the impossible”. With this blog I want to do my best to motivate you to give the impossible a shot. I once thought that a 5k race would be impossible for me to finish. I was wrong. Then I figured a 10k was out of my reach. Wrong again. Then I ran my first half marathon in Boston in October of 2004 to honor my brothers – and I bet myself a package of Yodels (God those things are good) that I wouldn’t cross the finish line after 13.1 miles. Well I enjoyed those Yodels on the bus home, with a my first ever finisher’s medal around my neck. This race took a lot out of me – it was the first time that I met The Tool (and those of you who have read this blog up to now know EXACTLY who that little 4″ schmuck is), and he convinced me that 13.1 miles was all this flabby body could handle. At this point in my life, the word “impossible” was defined as “any race that required me to waddle more than 13.1 miles” – and that definition appeared to be written in stone. It would take something huge to make me reach into my own personal dictionary and rip that definition out altogether.
Late 2004 – early 2005 was a lousy time for me. I had hit rock bottom and had begun to dig. I was unfocused. My overall attitude was extremely negative. I felt like I was a ship on an ocean in the midst of a storm, rudderless, with no shoreline in sight. My hull had begun to take on water and the S.O.S. was clearly being sent to anyone else at sea. Depression had set in.
It was at this point when a lighthouse appeared on the horizon. Its light awakened me from my despair, made me grab the helm, and slowly right my course. That lighthouse was my six year-old daughter. When I needed something to guide me – when I needed something to set my course to – there she stood, unflinching in front of me regardless of weather thown at us by Posiden. And at the same time I needed something to draw me out of my own internal storm, my daughter desperately needed a hero. And something inside me made me believe that the hero she needed………was me.
My daughter needed to be shown that a person can do anything he/she puts his/her mind to. Some goals may be extremely difficult to attain – but the difficulty only makes the victory that much sweeter. In order to show her that “impossible” was just a word, I needed a new challenge – something I felt that I truly could not do. That is how I wound up running the 2005 ING New York City Marathon. When I crossed that finish line, the word impossible truly was ripped from my own personal dictionary, never to be included in any future printings. When I placed my medal around my daughter’s neck as she stared at me with eyes as large as dinner plates (probably because I looked as if I went 12 rounds with Rocky Marciano – my knees and feet were bloody, my hands were swollen, and I had a limp more pronounced than Doctor House), I felt like I was her hero. When I kneeled in front of her and hugged her, I whispered in her ear “never let anyone tell you that you cannot do something. You can do anything, buddy. You just have to want it bad enough.” 5:20pm on Sunday, November 6th 2005: that moment in my life is one I will NEVER forget. And let me tell you – there aren’t many things in this world that can top the feeling of being a hero to a child – let alone your own.
I’m hoping that each of you will rip the term “impossible” out of your own personal dictionaries. Let’s face it – evey time we use that word it carries with it a negative connotation. Maybe a few of you are feeling like your own ships are dealing with some rough seas and stormy weather. Well look through your lives and find the lighthouse you need – who knows….maybe something within yourself will cast the strong light from your own shoreline that you can use to guide your ship. Set a goal for yourself that appears to sit just outside your reach, and then say to yourself “any other day I’d say this is impossible – BUT NOT TODAY.” Make the goal something that you enter in to your calendar. Make it several weeks or months away, so that you have to build up to attain it. Make the goal require hard and consistent work. And then, in the immortal words of Bum Phillips, “give everything you’ve got….and then a little bit more.” And then….when you cross your own finish line, whatever that may be, you will become your own hero.
Since that first marathon, I’ve set more difficult goals for myself in an attempt to show my daughter that if you can do anything as long as you never quit. I’ll continue to run marathons until my doctor tells me I shouldn’t any longer….and then I’ll run another just to show him that he was wrong. Some people think I’m a bit….well…..nuts to run as many marathons as I’ve targeted for myself. And let’s face it: they are probably right. But as I’ve just illustrated, I do have a number of very serious reasons for pushing myself the way I’ve been trying to. Now I’d like to share another one of them with you.
2010 will mark my 6th running of the ING New York City Marathon, and my 4th running for the New York Road Runners Team for Kids (“TFK”). This is a charity that I believe strongly in, because I have seen first hand how much they are helping grammer school kids throughout the city fight childhood obesity. TFK volunteers empower youth development via running and character-building programs in low-income schools and community centers in New York City, throughout the country, and in South Africa. Please take a look at the charity’s home page (www.tfkworldwide.com) for more information and details on the number of running programs provided. This charity is making a real difference with kids, and I’d like to ask you to consider helping them with their cause by making a donation – no donation is too small, and all donations are used wisely by the organization to maximize the benefit to the children they serve.
Making a donation to TFK is easy. The charity assigns each runner a specific home page on their secure fundraising site. I’ve attached my home page to this post (http://www.runwithtfk.org/Member/PublicPage/1289), in the hope that you’ll consider making a donation. All contributions are tax-deductible.
Your giving helps New York Road Runners Youth Programs to:
- Serve over 100,000 children in more than 400 schools and community centers with FREE programs.
- Reach children of all fitness levels and athleticism, with a heightened focus on reaching out-of-shape and overweight kids with little or no athletic experience.
- Prevent overweight or obese children from eventually suffering heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses that lead to health-care costs in excess of $100 billion annually.
Whether you are a runner, have worked with children, or have kids yourself, I hope you will join me to further this great cause!
Thanks for taking a moment to read this. Regardless of whether you choose to donate to the charity or not please know that I appreciate your support with this blog and, as a direct result, my efforts to train for the challenges I’ve set for myself. I look at this blog as my way of staying focused on my goals, because ordinarily I have the attention span of a gnat. And now back to our regularly-scheduled lunacy.
– Joseph
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“The greatest pleasure in life, is doing the things people say we cannot do.” – Walter Bagehot