I have a couple of reasons that I run.

To begin with, I always regretted not running with my Father and siblings back in the 80s and 90s.  My dad began running around age 55 and ran upward of 15 marathons before he stopped around age 74.  He eventually passed away due to lung cancer.  My late sister and my brothers also ran and all ran marathons with him.  I was in college when he started and then ended up 800 miles away raising my family later on.  Well here I am now dad, 50 years old and running my first half marathon.  Here I am now KT.  You always encouraged me to at least get on a treadmill once a day as you saw me gaining weight and getting sick more often.  Here I am.  I run because of you.  I wish you both were here to see.

Secondly, I run because it is the a competition I can enter that has a level playing field.  Sure there are those like TJ that are run well.  But for the most part, I know that if I run 6 times a week and slowly increase my mileage, one day I can be good, at least for my age.  I am not an athlete and never was.  I was the last to be picked for teams when I was a kid.  Really, sports didn’t interest me much.  Now in my 50’s, I run.  Each run I pray for God to keep me from getting hurt.  He knows I have to run and why I am running.

I run also because it gives me a goal to achieve.  Soon after we started running TJ mentioned Boston.  I thought, “Yeah, like I could qualify for Boston!”  In March of 2013 I decided to change my blog name from runat49 to 278toBoston as a reflection of the fact that my goal is Boston and to remind myself where I came from (278 lbs).

Boston is my goal.  Many people qualify for Boston in their later life.  My goal is to go from obesity to Boston.

I cannot make an excuse.

I just run.