And Here We Are...

AJMac has already chronicled his achievements of this past year. Perhaps in a future post, I will do the same. For now, however, I just want to make a couple of points. It was February when we made the challenge, started this blog and began planning, training, and executing (with both success and non-success) to climb our "Pointe-du-Hoc". For AJMac, he made quick improvement and then had some disappointments. For NotsoflashGordon, he had some injury and some obstacles that held him back, only to return as AlotmoreflashGordon. And I, CGB, had slow and steady improvement, patience being elusive, as I constantly tried to catch AJMac.

What metaphors for so many situations in life! I have fallen in love with running because it mimics who we are, what we desire and what lies in the way before us. It is a chance to set goals that allow us to fail miserably and then rejoice when we succeed; and we take no one as collateral damage - we leave no bodies behind. It is just us and the road and our demons and our baggage. In the end, we learn how to think, how to plan, how to humble ourselves and how to persevere. In the end, we learn confidence.

That is what this has meant to me, this challenge and blog, and it has been most gratifying because of the chance to do it with two close friends. Now, it is December, and at least two of us have met our goal - and the same PR, in fact! The climb and improvement in the end became staggering; if only (here comes the next allegory) we had faith.

And so, here we are. 18:37, a chance to meet head-to-head, the Lord's birthday upon us and the anticipation of what lies ahead. The blog was set up in the beginning to be finite - December 31, 2008. Where will running take us as we move forward? Well, I suspect that when the time comes, we will lace up the running shoes, hit the road, and let the stride take us.

For now - congratulations to AJMac. Let's see what happens when we race together in a week or so. Let's try to get AlotmoreflashGordon below 19:00.