Inspiration

I have an amazing family, which includes two incredibly awesome brothers.  When I started running, my oldest brother was my lifeline.  He was the one I went to with questions and he was the one who helped me train (through text and e-mail) for my first half-marathon.  I had two goals during my first half - first, not to walk and second, to finish.  With his help and encouragement, I accomplished both of those goals.  He was much fast than I was at the time, but ran at my pace so we could run and finish it together.  Since then, I've gone on to shatter that race time as well as complete other races.

I remember standing in the kitchen at my parents' house on Christmas Day in 2010.  I was talking to my brother and his wife about running.  At that point, I was running maybe a mile to a mile and a half a day.  He asked me if I'd ever heard of a guy named Dean Karnazes.  I hadn't (crazy to think that now, right?), and he told me I should read his book Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner.  He said it was full of entertaining stories about Dean's life and how he started running.

When we returned home, I checked his book out from the library.  Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down.  I read in bed at night, laughing my head off.  My husband just gave me that look - you know, the one non-runners give you because they think you're absolutely off your rocker?  Yep, that one, and we've all been there at one time or another.  I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish, and I got "that look" quite frequently (and still do, actually).  Dean clearly had ups and downs, but it was the "never give up" attitude that inspired me.  I even had the chance to meet him in 2011 at the opening of the Kansas City North Face Store, which was very cool.

I won't say that I'm going to go out and run an ultra, but I also won't tell you I'm never going to do it.  Three years ago, I never would have believed that I could have run a half-marathon, let alone be planning to run a full, and yet here I am, thanks in part to people like my big brother and Dean Karnazes.  I still draw inspiration from them, but there are a lot of people in the running community with some pretty amazing stories.  I'm learning about many of them through the world of Twitter and various running blogs.  

That's the beauty of inspiration.  It strikes different people at different times and in different ways.    

Who (or what) inspired you to start running?  Who (or what) inspires you now?