This year I turned 35 years old, and I celebrated in true TWV fashion...by running lots of miles and seeking donations :)
As many know, I am training to become an #ultramom while simultaneously attempting to raise a family lifetime total of $50,000 for Team World Vision. My race isn't until October, but training is well underway. In fact, for the month of April, I ran 146.65 miles. This is actually a record for me...it is the most amount of miles I have ever logged in one month. Ever. And that number will only keep climbing.
Training is tricky. I am already running more miles than I normally do towards the end of marathon training season, and I am technically still in Base Training. It's mind boggling to think that my numbers are simply going to keep climbing. My legs are tired, and sometimes I just want to give up. Yet, my heart is so full. My boys are seeing me train for something HARD, and my friends and family are rallying behind me to help change lives. So let's be honest, the 24 hours I spent running this month were tiring and hard but TOTALLY WORTH IT! There were 720 total hours in the month of April. Calculating this out put my running in perspective for me. Scheduling time to run is hard, but it is completely doable when you get creative. Sometimes I have to get up early; other days I have to stay up late to finish work because I ran in the middle of the day, but when I am reminded of the kiddos who walk hours and hours EVERY day to fetch water, it makes my creative planning and sacrifices worth it. I am also fortunate that my kiddos can log a couple of miles with me every now and then. Our conversations are pretty fantastic during our runs, and nothing else competes for my attention when our feet hit the pavement together. It's pretty amazing actually.
Since I am in the habit of running back to back long runs, I decided I wanted to push myself a bit for my birthday. I am not going to lie, it was a struggle to come up with what to do that matched my birthday numbers in some way. I didn't want to run 35 miles because I was afraid to mess with training too much and wind up hurt, but I also wanted to do something more than what was planned for that weekend. I wanted to get friends and family out with me to help me log miles, and I hoped that people would donate to encourage me along the way. Since my birthday is on the 23rd, I settled for a 23K...back to back. This would be ten more miles than I needed to run that weekend (according to my training plan), so it would be difficult, but I trusted it wouldn't cause in injury. So my birthday weekend was born. I threw in a taco party for good measure, and my heart was bursting just thinking about it.
The amount of cheese I ate that weekend is just not even close to being good for you, but it was so much fun hanging out at my house and stuffing my face. In the end, I actually ran 50K that weekend. I overshot the second run, so I knew I was fairly close to the 50K when I finished. Kelsey suggest I tell the world of Facebook what happened. I followed her lead and challenged my friends to donate extra. I promised to go back out if two more people gained access to clean water. Sure enough, less than 5 minutes later, I was back out because three people jumped in to donate. I seriously have the best support system (and friends who like to torture me while simultaneously saving lives!).
So many people supported me on this journey, and I am continually grateful. This is my 7th year with Team World Vision, and I am constantly amazed at the number of people who continually donate on my behalf. I get a text alert every time someone donates, and my face lights up EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. It doesn't matter the amount. Donations mean that lives are changing, but they also mean that family and friends are by my side on this journey to solving the clean water crisis through World Vision.
