a non-runner's ultimate goal

I guess you could say it all started 2 years ago when i watched the 60+ year olds cross the finish line at the very place the marathon was born... Athens, Greece. As i sat there watching these people accomplish something they had trained so hard for i thought to myself, "man laura, you really need to do one of these things sometime in your life and feel what it feels like to follow through with something as intense as this." From that moment on I knew that I would someday cross the finish line of a 26.2 mile race. However, you know how these things always work out - you make up your mind to do something but before you know it a couple months go by, or in my case 2 years, and you still haven't brought yourself to even start that one thing that meant so much to you. THAT STOPS TODAY! I am going to do this...I'M GOING TO RUN A MARATHON!!

I've always been the type of person to push myself to the limit, but never has it been to something as extreme as putting my body through 5+ hours of complete hell. Heck, pushing myself to the edge had always meant either flinging myself on a 4 inch piece of wood (thanks to my 13 years as a gymnast) or throwing myself off a 10 meter platform, doing a gazillion flips, only to pray that i would go in the water the right way (thank you diving). Some of you might be wondering how it's possible that I was able to put my body through that much pounding and/or throw myself from insane heights, but let me just say that the mentality for that compared to the mentality you need for a race such as a marathon is radically different.

With that said, as that part of my life ends and this one begins, what better way to push myself than to pick up running. At first i thought NO WAY?!? i absolutely hate running. I couldn't even run more than 10 minutes without stopping to rest. How would it even be possible to make it 26.2 without dying? Well, thanks to my partner in crime, Kaitlin, we're in this together and we WILL complete a marathon (...and then eat massive amounts of Chipotle later on). So, to all those who thought we were joking when we said we were going to run this, prepare to be amazed!!