Resolution: Run a Marathon

This year I signed up to run the Joints in Motion marathon in Athens, Greece. It's a charity fundraiser that's put on by The Arthritis Society of Canada, where my mother worked before she died a few years ago. Her death has been hard for me to get over and one of the ways that I found really clears my head and gets me focused is through running, so I've been training at it intermittently and last year I ran the Scotiabank Half-Marathon. I didn't do very well in terms of time, but it was a milestone for me, an indication that I can accomplish what I set out to do in a mental or physical (or both) challenge.

I said in the summary that I wanted to run this marathon for a variety of reasons. I want to do it because I love to run and because I need the excercise. I want to do it because of my mother: because my training runs take me near places where she liked to spend time, because she loved Athens, because she worked at the Arthritis Society and because she mentioned occasionally that she would like to do this same run if she could quit smoking. I also want to do it for my grandmother, who has Arthritis and for the many people who have much worse symptoms than she does who do not get the care they need. What else? Selfishly, I want to be able to say I ran a marathon, and I also want to visit Greece.

My mother wanted her ashes scattered in Venice, and my sister and I found a nice place by the water but I haven't been able to get back there in the last 3 years and definitely won't be able to before November. I have a little idea that after I run this marathon, I will take the ferry up to Venice and sit and think about what I have accomplished.

More on all this later.