A Bucket List Item

I hate that term "Bucket List".  I know what it means and the movie was sappy and feel good and poignant.  But it is the term that best describes what I'm thinking about doing.  I have been struggling for awhile to do something that is meaningful to me.  For years - 15 years to be exact - the meaningful goal I strove for was getting my Ph.D.  I have spent considerable time, money, and energy on that goal.  That item is now crossed off my list and the bonus of finishing that project is having the job I love in a city that I am now calling home.  So now what?

That is the question I have been struggling with.  There are things I would like to do in my lifetime: learn another language; travel to Italy, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia; run a marathon; kiss my love on the top of the Empire State building; buy a house...you get the picture.  Well - I think I have made a decision and I'm a little scared to take that final step of committment.

I have been looking into training for a marathon.  Yep, that is right, a marathon.  This is amazing line of thinking for me for numerous reasons:

1. I hate to run.  Hate it!  Probably has something to do with the fact I qualify for the U.S. government's definition of morbidly obese. And running is no fun to me.  I get no endorphins from running, just displeasure.
2. Running a marathon would kill my knees.  Not my 33 year old knees, but the 55 year old knees that I would likely I have if I took up running.  Arthritis runs in my family and running is a sure factor of increasing the likelihood of a knee replacement.  I want to keep all my original body parts for my life...I mean I'm down one thyroid gland, but that doesn't really count.
3. My shape (aka my boobs) would like knock me out if I ran.  I don't want to be taken out by my own breasts.
4. I believe I have mentioned I hate, HATE running.

That being said, I'm going to start training for a marathon.  Not running in a marathon, but walking one. 

A few weeks ago, I was surfing the web doing research on walking shoes.  My current Nike's are worn out and the last straw was the bleeding blisters I got from walking home.  So during my research, I stumbled across the following website: The Walking Site - Marathon Walking.  I got extremely intrigued and over the last couple of weeks I keep coming back to it.  I have read the whole site and started looking at the training plans, especially the beginner training plan.  I have come to the conclusion that I could do this.  I could spend 6 months and train for a marathon.

Training could take place on the Mt. Vernon trail which starts in 1 mile from my apartment in Rosslyn and on all the other trails and sidewalks in the DC metro area.  I live within 3 miles of all the national monuments which isn't bad scenery to train around.  More importantly, the idea of working towards a goal is appealing to me.

This goal is not career orientated, but one of personal development (though I will argue that getting a Ph.D. is personal development, but I digress).  I don't care about my time, my rate, who would be ahead of me, but the sense of accomplishment...the accomplishment of completing one of the items off my "Bucket List"...an item that always seemed unacheiveable/pie-in-the sky until now.

So that is my decision.  I am going to train to walk a marathon - 26.2 miles.

At first, I was going to just walk the marathon length up and down the Mt. Vernon trail, but then I found about the SunTrust Richmond Marathon.  It takes place on November 13, 2010 in Richmond, VA.  It is a walker-friendly marathon that has a closed course for 7 hours.  That means I would need to walk a 16:01 minute mile in order to finish in that time frame.  Longer than that, I would have to walk on the sidewalks.

Now my dilemma is do I sign up?  This is the chickshit side of me.  No final commitment gives me a way out and right now I don't like it.  I don't like that feeling enough to sign up and commit.  So that makes me chickshit. But I have until June 30th to make the decision before the entry fee goes up again.

More to come.  Not sure how I am going to mark my progress in my training.  I'm leaning towards creating another blog or a section on this blog. 

That's my decision.  One I feel good about, nervous about, scared I will quit about, but nonetheless good about.