Hello World!

So, after four weeks of procrastination after promising to start a blog chronicling our journeys living with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and my road to the Boston Marathon, in which I hope to support fundraising and awareness for Duchenne by dedicating my race to my son William and all affected by Duchenne, here I am. Hello World! Don't expect to be regaled with profound thoughts on life and (fingers crossed) I won't bore you with the everyday minutia of life.

It's just 12 weeks to the start of the 115th Boston Marathon…and I'll be running it. For a runner it's been a quick trip to Hopkinton, the race's starting town. I've only been at it for about two years. (Yeah, I ran a couple years in high school but that was two decades ago!) I've always been a warm weather cyclist but, unsurprisingly, in the two years following William's diagnosis I put on about 20 lbs. It was time for a change.

I had always wanted to run a marathon and thought, perhaps, it would be reasonable to run myself into shape during the winter of 08/09 and give it a go come springtime. Well, after that winter I ran myself into good enough shape to plod through perhaps a quarter of a marathon. I had underestimated the huge volume of work involved by at least 20 miles! Regardless, I kept at it through the spring and summer trying to run more and farther. By August my weekend runs were finally in the double digits. Only then I admitted to my family that I hoped to run a marathon that October. So, I did. It was a great experience running the challenging Cape Cod Marathon. Somewhere along the road in Falmouth on Cape Cod I was bitten by the contagious running bug. I came home wanting more.

I kept running almost daily and watched myself improve, go faster and faster, and drop almost 45 pounds by the following spring while I ran two half marathons, a 16 miler, a 10K, and many 5Ks. I even ran a few 5Ks pushing William in the jogger. Speeding along as fast as we can is thrilling to him. Twice we finished in the top 5 and once broke 20 minutes together.

I had planed to run another marathon and, based on a recent half marathon time, decided that if I ran almost every day, stayed focused, worked hard, and sacrificed I would have an outside shot at qualifying for Boston. At the time I gave myself a 1 in 4 chance but, as the summer progressed, so did my odds. I ran almost a thousand miles last June to October. By the time I toed the line at the Baystate Marathon I was 100% confident in my readiness to run a Boston qualifying marathon and did just that.

That's it. Two quick years of running and here we are just 12 weeks out from Boston. There's a lot more work to be done.