I'm so excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This run is just getting easier and easier. Well, not that I've even been running that much lately, but I keep finding new sources of inspiration that I'm sure are going to make the miles just fly by.

At the Joints in Motion meetup party last week, I met all the very inspiring people who ran this past year, as well as several people who will be running again this year. That was exciting. It's very interesting to see how people sign up to run year after year and the marathons or the fundraising don't seem to consume them. I think all the passion and motivation in the room has a lot to do with that and it is for sure contagious. Next year, they're going to do the Great Wall Marathon and I'm already scheming ways to fit that in before our South America trip! But anyways...

Not only were the people inspiring, but I also learned that the race finishes in the old Olympic stadium. How's that for feeling victorious? Wow.

Then the other day I actually looked at the Athens Marathon site and I found out some even better stuff. It's the same course that they used in the Olympics (the modern ones) and it starts, for real, at the ancient battlefield in the town of Marathon. This is why a marathon is called a marathon, because 2,500 years ago Pheidippides was sent to Athens from the battlefield in Marathon to announce that the Greek army had been victorious against the Persians. "It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping, but moments after proclaiming his message to the city, he collapsed dead from exhaustion." uh-oh.

But seriously, how awesome is that?I'm stoked.