What most of you don’t know is that I was about to give up the whole idea of the marathon. Until today, it had been four weeks since I had run more than ten miles in its entirety. The last two long runs I did were a month ago. And I walked a chunk of each of them. My reasoning had everything to do with it being too hot, too dehydrated and/or telling myself I needed to be able to run again after walking. And then, I realized I screwed up and started my training by two weeks early. For the next two weeks, I didn’t do any long runs. The week I went camping, I brought my running stuff, but never took it out of my suitcase. Somewhere in all of this, I was over it. Done with running. Last night, I got a message from a friend who is running the Marine Corps Marathon because of me. She signed up never having run anything more than a 5K. She signed up because I believed in her and told her so. Her message came at the perfect time. We made plans to meet for breakfast, which