Teaser Thursday

I am so excited to announce that next Monday, I’ll be posting the first segment of a two-part interview with Joe, the marathoner who is raising money for his friend Dom’s cancer treatment! 

 Joe of Joe is Running for Dom is a blogger many of us have come to know and love.  We know him from his blog, Twitter, and DailyMile.  Joe is running the Boston Marathon  on April 19th and will run the Pittsburgh Marathon thirteen days later as a double fundraiser for Dom.  Many of us have run races for a cause, though truth be told, often the charity is a corporate one to which we  have no personal attachment. Joe epitimizes running for a cause, but in this case, the cause is one of his best friends.  This makes it personal.

Here’s a snippet of the interview, a preview of what’s to come:

Lara: Health can be pretty fleeting.  When you go out on your training runs for the purpose of running two marathons in 13 days, is it possible that you’re giving yourself the health and exercise that Dom can’t have?  If you BOTH can’t have it, at least one of you is living the healthy life?

Joe: That’s an interesting point Lara; I’ll tell you one thing that has changed about my training runs that I attribute to training for Dom.  There is a hill along one of the routes I run, it is a really good hill to train on because it forces you to practice running downhill for almost a full kilometer with not a single flat place.  It’s steep enough that you have to lengthen your stride, but not too steep that you have to “brake” the entire way down.  It’s perfect practice for the start of the Boston Marathon where the early portions of that race can really destroy the quadriceps over the first few downhill miles.  Up until I started training for RFD (Run For Dom) I had run up that hill exactly one time.  It seemed unfair.  Too steep, too long, no breaks, no recovery. Since I started my 16-week to Boston, 18-week to Pittsburgh training schedule I run up that hill every Sunday and I place it in the last 1/4 of whatever distance I am going.  I run that hill now and think only about Dom.  How if, given the chance, wouldn’t he relish that hill?  Would he celebrate it? Run up it and at the top, laugh to himself at just how easy that was compared to the other things he is going through?  So that’s what I do now once a week.  That hill gets shorter and shorter, flatter and flatter every time I go up it.  Heartbreak Hill in Boston at mile 21?  I’ll have a little something for that one when the time comes.

Head over to RunForDom.com and support a mile in Boston or Pittsburgh!