March 29th, 2018

Today, I found out about the Asha for Education program through an email from a colleague at work. My first instinct was to ignore it, it seemed unrealistic that some organization could help train you for a marathon. But I was curious, so I asked some additional questions. 

The response I got from that colleague was so overwhelmingly positive, that it was hard to ignore. He spoke at length about the transformation and change in lifestyle having gone through the program. I knew I wanted to run a Marathon some day, just didn't think it could happen this early.

I was still on the fence but the idea of training for a full marathon in a structured manner and getting to contribute towards an incredible cause (http://ashanet.org/) was too hard to pass up. I signed up the very next day. 

There was no turning back at this point. OK, maybe there was some opt-outs but I couldn't chicken out on those kids for whom I'll be raising funds. This was an easy win-win. The SF Marathon is on July 29th, 2018, exactly 3 months later and here I was, ground zero, having run 1 mile, about 2 weeks ago. 

Some background - I have run a couple of 10k's and half-marathon's in the past but I mostly 'winged' them. I was never a strong runner, I was just able to finish them one way or another with not-so-great timings and also not feeling super good at the end of the runs. I knew I couldn't just 'wing' a full marathon, I had to take this seriously and do it right.