Overwhelmed!

So it hit me in the past few days that this marathon is really happening.

Not the running part. The running part I've got down. Almost to the point where it's uneventful to run 16+ miles, because I now know that I can. I am a runner.

I repeat:

I am a runner.

But it dawned on me that I have $3000 to raise and about 7 weeks to do it.

Woops.

Granted, I had planned on making a trip to do some fundraising concerts down south in Virginia and North Carolina this August which had to be cancelled at the last minute, so I HAD a plan. But all the best laid plans...

So here comes the hard part--how do you raise $3000? When I signed up to run for the charity I chose I felt like it was a totally reachable goal. Now I think I must have been crazy! Where will this money come from? I know not. I have some ideas, and I'll keep going.

But meanwhile, like I said, running is going quite well. Did 18 miles this weekend. 18 freakin' miles. That's just over an hour of running. And it felt pretty normal. That's amazing. This is the girl who used to not be able to run a mile in school. The human body is a beautiful thing. But what's amazing is I don't quite know yet how to change my mental perception of myself. Even though I've been running pretty regularly since January, and definitely since April, I still think of myself as incapable of any type of real athleticism.

So my brain seems to recognize that only a true runner should be able to run 18 miles easily, but my daily state seems to forget.

How do you get all your different brains to match up? The history brain, the reality brain, the perception of current events and facts? And maybe it's just a constant reassessment and recalibrating. (My computer says that's not a word. To calibrate again. And again. And again.)

I am grateful for legs that keep me moving, at various paces, fast, slow and in between.

I am grateful for joint that seem to suffer my folly to run for 3 hours straight.

I am grateful for the three donations I've already received for my fundraising goal!

I am grateful for a brain that can learn new things, like finally accepting the truth of my own strength.