Praying and Running

Each person enumerating the things they are thankful for; It's a tradition around many Thanksgiving day tables. We do it in our family too. The responses always range from humorous, to the cliche, to the heartfelt. All fine and good. It is part of Thanksgiving dinner after all. As I began thinking about it this year, a line that we sing in the Gloria at Mass kept coming back to me. "We give thanks for your great Glory." What is this "great Glory" we give thanks for? I started allowing this question to run around in my mind and I remembered somewhere reading or hearing that God's Glory is His Creation. You know existence, the world, the universe, "all things visible and invisible", you and I incuded. To help answer this question and expand on the idea of being thankful for God's "great Glory" I turned to the story of creation in the Bible and to the section in the Catechism on creation for further study. The bible points out tha...

This was my first marathon and it was a great personal success. I put in nearly 1200 miles at an average pace of 7:47 MPM in training over the course of 19 weeks with the highest mileage week coming in at 80 miles. In the 19 weeks of training 6 days a week I missed only 2 runs. The first was a medium-long run at the end of a the first "step-back" week. I was absolutely exhausted. The other was a 4 mile recovery run on a day with 2 recovery runs scheduled, you know, a double and life just didn't cooperate. I had several goals for the race with my "In your wildest dreams" goal of 2:54:59, a stretch goal of 2:59:59, a "probably can do" goal of 3:04:59 and a "least acceptable" of 3:14:59. All but the "stretch" goal were based on Boston qualification standards. 2:54:59 would allow me to register on day 1 nearly guaranteeing a spot in the 2014 running of the Boston Marathon. 3:04:59 would allow me to register in the second phase and st...

I would just like to take a minute and a few words to recognize those who's support was critical in the successful completion of my first marathon. If you have never known someone training to race a marathon then you might not understand just what a huge commitment it is and how it becomes a part of every aspect of that person's life. I wasn't training to "finish" a marathon. I was preparing to race a marathon and while there is nothing wrong with "finishing" as you can imagine racing that distance demands much more in the way of daily training. During my training cycle I ran an average of 10 miles a day and near the peak of my training it wasn't unusual to run 14 on Monday, 18 - 20 on Wednesday, and 12 or 13 on Friday while still running 6-8 on the other days. This demanding schedule left me fatigued and hungry. Two things that make me a "bear" to be around. So I would like to thank people who put up with me on a daily basis; my family, ...