Workout: 25 min, easy run; The Yard

For the rest of the day after my marathon, I could barely stand and could only move around at a slow hobble, so I spent most of that day in bed, while Kat was kind enough to pamper me. My feet improved quickly after draining what remained of the blisters and coating them in neosporin, but I was still pretty achy for the next couple of days and looked like someone who only recently learned to walk. By the following weekend, I was feeling close to normal again. I wasn’t up for any long-distance walking, but I was recovered enough to join my honored teammate, Reilly, in a charity walk of his own.

Many of my sponsors included well wishes for Reilly when they sent their donations. I had the pleasure last weekend of joining Reilly, his family, and several other supporters who came out to join him in support of the Arthritis Foundation. (Reilly has arthritis, among other things). He had a successful fundraising campaign, raising more than $2000. I enjoyed getting to meet some of his family that I hadn’t met before, and also got a kick out seeing him have a lot of fun. It was a very kid-friendly sort of thing where the walk covered a big loop in a park, with several stations along the way with games and activities for the kids to participate in. If the kid was hurting, I couldn’t tell. Even without a marathon to train for, he’s still an inspiration to me.

Today - two weeks since completing my first marathon - I felt recovered enough to go for my first real run in several months. The good news is that there was no pain or discomfort in my right knee, so I’m optimistic that if I take it slowly, I’ll be able to get back into a running routine. The bad news (but not too bad) is that I felt like a beginning runner again, because even keeping my effort to as easy a run as I could, a 25-minute run was harder than I expected it to be. In some ways, I’m back where I started, but my Team in Training experience has given me more confidence about my ability to train myself into the shape I want to be, so what once felt like a nearly impossible goal looks a lot more attainable now.

Although completing the marathon was an extremely satisfying personal achievement, I’m even more satisfied (and surprised) by the success of my fundraising efforts. The fundraising goal I started out with was $2000, but thanks to the incredible generosity of my sponsors, I raised nearly $5400. Some of that came from a generous donor who agreed to match my goal amount if I raised it, but even without the matching donation, my family and friends helped me surpass the original goal by quite a bit. (Some donations continue to trickle in, so that total could still go up.) I was more nervous about the fundraising aspect of Team in Training than anything else, and I didn’t do myself any favors by getting a late start on it, but my friends and relatives really came through. Thanks to all my sponsors for contributing so generously to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! (Individual thanks are on the way soon, but I have a lot of thank you’s to write, so please forgive me for being a little slow.)

I don’t expect my first marathon to be my last, and I would definitely like to sign up with Team in Training for future events, but I won’t be signing up for back-to-back seasons this time around. Besides having a big move coming up that I expect to consume much of my time and energy for the next few months, it’d be hard to fundraise so much again so soon. I thoroughly enjoyed my first Team in Training experience and sharing it with those who chose to follow along with my training at my blog, “The Finite Monkey”. I hope you enjoyed it, too, and that you’ll join me again the next time I sign up.