Who will be running with me?

My brother-in-law, Will, is the real reason behind my attempt at a half-marathon.  When looking for a way to stop smoking, he suggested running.  He has been a great support and will be running along with me.  I can't thank him enough for his help.  I asked him to write a "guest blog" the other day and he kindly agreed.  Enjoy!


                                     Guest Blog: Special Delawarathon Edition

I am not a runner, I am a marathoner. I know this sounds obnoxious but bear with me. I am inspired by runners, and jealous of them. For them the run is the end, for me it is the means. I wish that I loved running, that I woke up looking forward to my next run, that I lived for those solitary hours of pounding the pavement, but I don't. I run because I need to do something active for my health and running is cheap and easy. I do it because if I didn't then I would sit at home eating ice cream every night instead. (Now I can at least rationalize the ice cream on nights when I'm not running.)  So for me the marathon is the goal that keeps me focused, keeps me doing the thing I know I should be doing anyway but cannot find the internal motivation to do. This is something Michael and I have in common.  We also have in common that our wives are both expecting. In my case my wife is pregnant with our third. I will be running the Via Half Marathon with my
brother in law, the regular host of this blog, three months after our third is born. I started training for my first marathon shortly after our second child was born, so I know that finding the time to train is possible with kids, even newborn kids. It is not easy, but it is possible.  Yesterday I ran the Delaware Marathon, my third marathon since my second boy was born. I had high aspirations, but largely they fell by the wayside as the
months sped past. Two kids, a houseful of projects, a newborn on the way, winter weather, and a serious tax bill disassembled my training plan.  Still I managed a not too awful 4:00:31 time, two minutes better than my first marathon (unfortunately a full thirty minutes worse than my second). The whole race is in Wilmington, and is really two loops of a half marathon that starts and finishes in the revitalized waterfront district. It was a great run for the first half, but I really had to force myself to run the second half as I ran past my truck at the midway point. That would be my only complaint. It was hillier than Philly (host city for my first two marathons) and 20 degrees hotter and it was raining at the start, but it was well organized, well staffed, and
there were some crowds and people blasting stereos. Being the only road marathon in Delaware, it attracted a lot of "50 Staters," people trying to run a marathon in every state. There were also a lot of relay teams (4 and 8 person teams) the members of which would have crushed my spirit as they blew past me in the later stages of the race had they not been wearing special "Relay" bibs on their backs. I am assuming that is the sole reason for those back bibs, since full marathoners were not wearing them. I don't know that I'll run the full Delawarathon again until they make a full 26.2 mile loop, but I might just run the half next Spring.