“It’s a marathon, not a sprint, Kristi.” We must have heard that advice 30 times in the first months after Kristi’s diagnosis. I hated it. I didn’t want it to be true. It didn’t feel like a marathon. Several of my posts likened it to running the 400 meters, a brutally taxing sprint. Well meaning friends were telling us to pace ourselves. But that didn’t seem possible at the time.

Now that I’m familiar with running, I can say that her fifteen month battle was a sprint. Sprint’s demand all your energy from the opening gun to the finish line. I finished my second official 5K race two weeks ago. It is the sprint event of distance running. By the end of the first mile my lungs were screaming, by the time the finish line came into view at 3.1 miles I was spent.

Tomorrow morning I will toe the start line of the Austin Marathon. Its my first race at that distance. By mile 1 I will barely be warmed up. I expect to be fully loose and hitting my stride about mile 3. Miles 3-8 promise to be relatively easy. Then comes four to six miles of uphill that will put teeth into the course. At mile 14 the course flattens out and meanders to the 20 mile mark. That’s as far as I’ve run in training…and it hurt.

I managed to run 2-3 days per week on our trip, and let me tell you that was grand. Whether running the rolling hills outside Sydney, along the beaches of the Coral Sea, cruising the Southern Alps or busting through the native bush around Rotorua, I soaked up the atmosphere and reveled in the views. However I wasn’t able to get in as many long runs as I hoped and that hurt my preparation for tomorrow. Once I cross the 20.3 mile threshold I’ll be in virgin territory for a single run. I know getting to the finish will require grit and fortitude similar to the half-ironman triathlon race last October.

But you see the difference don’t you? The marathon eases you in, warms you up and then drops the hammer at the end. The sprint comes at you hard from the get go and never lets up. That’s what Kristi and I faced.

Nine hours from now I’ll finally get to experience what a full marathon is like. Look for an after action report. In the mean time your prayers for safety are appreciated. It’ll just be me, several friends from the Georgetown Triathletes club and 19,999 others moving through the streets of Austin.

Oh, and if you know someone going through cancer, keep your mouth shut about it being a marathon. Know that its requiring everything they’ve got to make it through each day. They’re in a sprint, no matter how long the battle. Take care of them accordingly.