My first follower, my many "fans" and those who drive me forward

I was so pleased to see that I finally have a follower!  Here I thought all these words and thoughts would go unnoticed and unread.  It is extra special to me that my first follower was my cousin Beth.  Beth and I were the only two female grandchildren in a sea of many boys.  Growing up and now, she was always my measuring stick of how well I was doing in life (she is awesome!!!).  I aspired to be like her; even though she burnt my ear with a curling iron...oh yes, I still remember!! Beth and her husband, Murry, are the main reasons that I even knew about TNT and the Disney Marathon.  They are now marathon junkies, but I remember when Murry was training for his first TNT event and he was discussing the ungodly amount of miles that he had ran that morning with my dad.  The reason I remember this so vividly is that it was Thanksgiving!!  As I sat there shoving turkey in mouth, I thought two things:  first, he is a sucker to do this and second, that is amazingly awesome!  Who knows maybe somewhere along this journey someone will call be a sucker too.

The Leukemia Society is big on having heroes.  The purpose is that when you are struggling with training that you remember all the things that that hero had to endure with cancer and you will keep moving.  As you know from my previous posts, my heroes are my grandma and my "aunt" Lancy.  But there is another hero that I have to call attention to.  As I sit here writing this, my little brother is on a plane on his way to Iraq (or maybe Afghanistan, they never tell them for sure until they are there).  He is a member of The United States Army and I am so desperately proud of him!  Yes, there are lots of times as I am training that I think about my grandma or about Lancy and the anger of losing them pushes me through, but more often lately I have thought about Josh.  I think about how he use to do cross country because he LIKED to run (whatever that is about?!) and I always think about how we had talked about doing this race together.  We would have of course been only running together in theory as he would have been hours and miles ahead of me, but together none the less.  Maybe the Disney 2010 marathon won't be the last stop on this journey.  Maybe it is just the warm up event for the time when my baby brother comes home and I can take him up on his promise.

I didn't get to talk to him the day he left, but I know that my dad told him that I had just completed my first 10K.  Josh said that he was so proud of me and that he wanted me to take it easy and only do the half marathon if I needed to.  How humbling (and wrong) it is for a solider to be proud of YOU and worried about YOU before they leave for war.  That is what will push me this week...it just might push me every week.