The day before 26.2.

With God's help we will do mighty things. 

Psalms 60:12

24 hours from now I will be toeing the line of my first ever marathon. 

26.2

I have never been more excited or nervous in my life! The last 16 weeks have been a complete roller-coaster  in my running world. Thanks to an abundance of health issues, my training didn't just get side-tracked- it got de-railed, week after week. Of my 16 week training plan, I  accomplished the goal mileage only 6 of those weeks. I feel wildly unprepared and haphazardly trained. 'Marathon training' has almost a bitter taste in my mouth; for to me it represents dozens of skipped runs, long runs slashed into short jogs and the most illogical approach to cross-training that has ever existed.

But training isn't what will get me across that finish line tomorrow. 

Running this marathon is not just a goal for me- it's a dream. As a perfectionist deathly afraid of failure, I stopped dreaming many years ago. It was simply too risky. If the percentage of failure of a particular dream was too high, I learned to neatly re-arrange what I wanted to no longer include it.

This marathon is a dream. I could fail. 26.2 is a long freakin' way.

Every day that my carefully calculated training- my safeguard from failure - fell apart ---- the real recipe for success grew; my determination to succeed. I believe that I can- and that's what is going to get me to the race. 

But I can already taste the victory of crossing that finish line. 

(NOT) training for this marathon has taught me so many life lessons, and I know that I will encounter even more tomorrow when the rubber meets the road and I get to sweat it out. 

Sometimes we face life confident, poised and assured. 

Sometimes we face life disheveled, disoriented and discouraged. 

Sometimes in life we have the opportunity to see and prepare for obstacles.

 Sometimes they hit us out of the blue. 

 We keep going. We persevere. We don't quit.

We learn to dream again. 

Ready- set - GO!