I was not even a quarter of a mile into my run when the realness of the moment sank in. The past seven months my life had been training runs, strength training, phone calls, emails, and meetings in search of potential donors to support my MS Run the US fundraising campaign. All of which were integral parts of this journey to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. My desire to get to this moment in time was what helped me dig deep and push through on the difficult training runs. I don’t know how many different ways I imagined this day would feel and I am not certain that I will find words that accurately portray those emotions either.
I know there was a smile on my face because I could feel it as I took in the cool morning Ohio air. I recall the excitement that I owned because for the first time as a runner I would not be making a loop. I would be running from point A to point B, every mile helping our relay team get closer to the finish in New York. All of my training runs and races either took me back home or the finish line was also the start line. I wanted to make the most of every step, allowing all of my senses to experience this place I had never been before.
While my eyes were snapping images of the sights around me I thought about all of the people who contributed to my fundraising campaign. I reflected over how so many people stepped up big donating their hard earned money in a year that a pandemic is in full effect. I am thankful for the many people that I met along the way who either had MS or a family member who suffered from MS. I am grateful that they took the time to share their stories with me. I was running for them. Running so that hopefully one day nobody else would go to bed feeling normal and wake up blind in one eye with their life changed forever.
I started my run on a small trail in a local park in Cuyahoga Falls, OH. The weather was nice and cool which was quite the opposite of what Texas weather had given me to train in. I was very excited about running in cooler temperatures to say the least. I focused in on the directions Haley and Malcom had given me for my run, I really did not want to get lost within the first three miles. I then laughed to myself a little as I realized just how much I had going on at the same time. Directions, breathing, taking in as much of the scenery as possible, watching for things I might trip on, reflecting over how I got here… then there was the momma duck with five baby ducks following her along the same route I was taking (got distracted by my next turn or I might have taken a picture of them).
Cool weather and the adrenaline rush from beginning the 167 mile adventure I had trained seven months for blurred any awareness I had of my starting pace until I hit the half marathon distance. To be fair though, I typically do not look at my pace until I have completed a training run. Shockingly enough the first fatigue that I encountered that day was my face, I am quite certain that I had been smiling every step of the way. I decided it best to slow down after the thirteen mile mark, so after a restroom break I began walking while I ate a snack and drank some water. I made my way out of the city into a more rural area where I found myself running again, only at a much slower pace this time. I took in some more views of the Ohio country side and stored some more mental pictures of the beautiful houses as I passed them by.
It was here that I spent some time reflecting over all of the events in my life that led me to running on a Monday morning in Ohio. I even thought back to my high school days when my track coach would drop the distance runners off and have us run back to the school. I was not a fan of running on an oval track back then, so I truly enjoyed those days. As I ran past some Ohio cows and I recalled coach telling me one day to leave the cows alone as we drove past them headed further away from the high school track. Coach Trahan passed away December 1, 2020. I can still hear him telling me that I was a distance runner while I argued that I was a jumper. I am certain that if he’s looking down on me now he is laughing at the washed up volleyball/basketball player with dreams of running a 100 mile race. He was definitely right about the distance thing!
It was around this point in my run that I encountered my first hills. (Maybe I should type that in all caps HILLS to be more acurate). I knew there were hills on this segment, Ashley talked about them quite a bit. We do have hills in Texas, but I don’t think they compare to what I encountered in Ohio and Pennsylvania. I realized after the next hour of hills that this would be my life for the next 6 days. The hills and I did not become best friends from the start, it was a relationship that took five and a half days to develop.
At some point in the second half of the day I started feeling a little bit of tightness in my right achilles tendon. I knew I was putting in crazy miles this week so I didn’t think much more about it. I do recall not feeling any sort of pain discomfort when my watch showed me that I had run 26.2 miles. I stopped, took a picture of my watch and I took a picture of the place I was at when I completed my first marathon distance. It definitely was not fast, and that of course was not the goal but it was an awesome accomplishment for me. I was supposed to have gone over this mark on my 60K attempt at Pedernales Falls State park which did not happen. I shook my head and smiled as I thought back to the many times in my life that I swore that I would never run a marathon. I continued on through the rest of the run and finished with a grand total of thirty miles for the first day of segment 17.
Photo Credits- https://instagram.com/mal.c0m?utm_medium=copy_link