I am SO excited to feature an amazing blogger from Eat Drink Breathe Sweat, who I have been following (stalking?) for about 8 months. When I asked her if she was interested on being featured on Girls Run Faster, she was delighted to write up this most exciting journey of her marathon training. I’m not going to like, I was incredibly inspired by her story and think it’s the most romantic thing that her an her husband are training together!

Me? Run a marathon?!

I’m so totally honored to be a guest blogger over here at Girls Run Faster – and to be talking about something that I truthfully never thought I’d ever be talking about in the context of my own personal journey: running a marathon.

The old adage “if I can do it, you can, too” has never felt more spot-on to me than it does today.

You see, I never, ever thought I’d be “that” person – y’know, a marathoner. I looked at them with such awe…and from a distance, always. Thinking how incredible it would be to run 26.2 miles – but also just how daunting it sounded too. And how unreachable it felt for me, personally.

I always thought I’d be on the outside looking in. Never the other way around.

But here I am, just weeks away from my first 26.2.
…well, here WE are, I should say.

You see, I didn’t decide to run a marathon – my husband and I decided to conquer it together. It actually all started years ago when my husband told me that on his list of ‘things to do before I turn 35,” he wanted to run a full marathon. At the time, I totally scoffed at him, thinking it was just a pipe dream, and would never come to fruition. I mean, I truly never thought I’d EVER have it in me to run 26.2 miles…I mean that is just a ridiculous distance, is it not??

And honestly? It still feels like a ridiculous distance – but the difference came last year after I saw a few of my blog friends conquer 26.2 and they inspired the heck outta me. They ran with such heart and a fearlessness that I totally envied. What really sealed the deal for me, though? When I decided that 2012 would be my year of ‘no limits’ – of knocking down boundaries and predefined expectations of what I could be, could do, could become if I just stopped limiting myself.

So together, we committed.

And we haven’t regretted that decision, whatsoever.  Quite the opposite, actually. It’s become an incredible bonding experience for us as a couple, but also a huge individual growth opportunity for each of us, too. I never saw this ‘side effect’ of training coming, I’ll tell you that. I simply envisioned lots of running, lots of purple toenails and a really tired body by the end of it.

But instead? This has become so much more than just a training schedule – it’s become an amazing journey, much more so spiritually than even physically, which is crazy to say considering what we’re putting our bodies through at the moment!

So when people ask me now: “what motivates you?” or “how do you keep upping those miles week after week?”, my answer is simple: “I just *really* want to see what’s around the next bend in the path.” I’m so curious to see where we’ll ‘be’ by the end of this thing that I am constantly excited and energized to keep on truckin’ through training.

So while I’m not a marathoner….yet, what I will urge you to do is this. Next time you’re faced with a challenge (of ANY sort) that scares you and leaves you wanting to run the other way: stop. Think about why it scares you. Think about why your first instinct is to run the other way. Is it because you’re too busy living in your own boundary-filled, limit-filled reality? If so, I say to you “have no limits today.”

Trust me when I say that it is absolutely worth it.