Indulgences (and the LONGEST RUN YET!)

I had the a rather thought provoking (and honestly, slightly hilarious) one of my coworkers. He is relatively new at my company but he came to the states from India ~3-4 years ago. My boss was telling him about my marathon and he later came to me to talk about it. It made me reflect a bit about how indulgent these sports can be.

I'll list his questions:
1. Do other people do this?
2. Do you make money off of this?
3. (When I explained that no, indeed I will pay a good chunk of money to enter the race) REALLY?
4. Why?

I thought these were all pretty interesting. Firstly from the perspective of someone who comes from a country (to be fair, he explained to me that his province specifically is overall impoverished and this is not necessarily true everywhere in the country) where people do not have the luxury to waste the time and MONEY on something as trivial as running 26.2 miles to nowhere I imagine it must seem absolutely bizarre. He was honestly shocked when I told him that these events can be huge and you can find a "fun run" type event nearly every weekend day.

The prize money question CRACKS ME UP. I have no idea how the finances work for professional athletes or even serious front of the pack/elites. I have never even been curious enough to find out what the prizes are (though, I did win that one tri and I got a $25 GC!).

The cost of some of these events still shocks me and I did find myself somewhat ashamed to tell him how much I am actually paying for the privilege of running until I want to die.

The last question is not specific to the international set, I have been asked this questions many times and asked myself this question as well. I'm still not sure why the marathon. Pride maybe, health sort of, the ability to eat a ton of crap at happy hour and not sweat it too much, sure. But I definitely know that in the process of training for this marathon (and my Tri TNT training) I have drank the Kool-Aid. Running has changed my life and I never miss the opportunity to evangelize it. The feeling you get when you finish a specific distance or cross a finish line is UNBELIEVABLE. I want everyone to feel that feeling.



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Separate note:

So I ran 22miles. What a disaster. i think I get why all of the plans have you only go up to
20miles. I feel a total wreck. It took me forever and i was hurting (a weird pain in my right lower leg).

But I finished. Since then I have indulged like never before. I don't think I have stopped eating. It is a weird chain eating that I have got to shake.

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