Not sure if you heard the two stories about the Chicago Marathon, on October 9, 2011. Ok, I'll be more specific. There were 45,000 runners, so there were closer to 45,000 stories, all very meaningful in their own way. Two struck me in particular.
The one you may have heard, because it has been on the national news, was of Amber Miller, a 27 year-old mother of one and an experienced marathoner. Amber was also 38 weeks and 5 days pregnant. Since she had always been a runner, her doctor encouraged her to continue with her running. She even ran a marathon earlier in her pregnancy. When race day came, it was beautiful, and she felt up for the run. She did a combination of running two miles and walking two miles, completing the race in 6:25:50, placing 34,339 ... beating over ten thousand people. After the race, she got herself a sandwich, then decided that she felt as if she was in labor so headed to the hospital, where she delivered a healthy baby girl, weighting over 7 lbs, later that evening. Mother and baby were both doing well! And may I say, Amber looked amazing while being interviewed. I guess you get that from being 27! I found it interesting that so many people were shocked or surprised by her running. I say good for her! I wouldn't encourage someone who never ran a step in her life to start running while pregnant, but if you do run, why stop? I ran two marathons while pregnant, Amsterdam at 12 weeks, and Disney at 24 weeks. I stopped running after the Disney Marathon, not so much that I wasn't allowed to run, more that I was just plain tired of running. I was also 42 years-old, and this was my first pregnancy. I wanted to enjoy it. There was, and is I hope, plenty of time to train in the future. I did do spinning up until the day I delivered, freaking out my spin instructor.
The other story that you most likely didn't hear about, unless you were reading a local Chicago or Greensboro, North Carolina paper was of Will Caviness, a 35-year old fire fighter, father of two -- 4 year-old boy and an 11 month-old girl, who was raising money for burn victims. His goal was to raise $2,000 and had surpassed it by $500. He died 500 yards from the finish line. The autopsy is still inconclusive as I type this. The Chicago Marathon results page had estimated he would come in at 3:05, which is damn fast. He was an experienced marathoner, coming in at 3:17 at the Outer Banks Marathon last year. They said he did his training runs pushing his daughter in her stroller. Gut wrenching, especially to this mother of a 3.5 year old. You want to talk about just plain wrong. I went to the website to donate to his charity, http://www.active.com/donate/IAFFBFdnBoACM11/WCavine, on Monday, and the donations were over $3,000. As I type this, they are now over $13,000.
Both of these stories hit very close to home for me. These runners were doing what they loved, and doing exactly the same things I would have done. If it is our time to be born or die, does it really matter if we are running a marathon or sitting on the sofa watching a marathon? Only the Universe truly knows. Do what you love, because you never really know what is going to happen next.
My heart and prayers go out to both of these families -- the new life that is, and the life that ended way too soon.
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