26.2 miles is long no matter how you think about it. If it is your tenth marathon of the year or your first marathon ever it is a big effort to finish a marathon. What you can guarantee is that at some point in the race you will be hurting, you will be tired of running and you will be wishing it was over. It is this kind of challenge that we seek out and how we bring our version of THPL to life.

Today at the Steamtown Marathon was the first marathon for a member of our THPL community. Given that the THPL journey is about shared experiences, about pushing to new levels of performance and helping whenever possible I decided to pace one of our THPL members to the finish line. It was a fun experience – the race approach changed – today was about pacing, about making sure that finishing was the priority, not the time. And so it went, mile after mile, progress made, challenges overcome, new experiences had. The role of the pacer, as I found out in Leadville, is to balance a lot of factors and to do so such that your runner maximizes their performance and still feels good about the race and their performance. And that is what happened. The combination of a commitment to finish aided by some gentle prodding got it done. The goal was to break five hours – we beat it by 24 minutes. It was a remarkable accomplishment on so many levels and proof once again that you can do more than you think you can and you are better than you think you are.

Loving life every time I run a marathon