The marathon Jay never wanted, for a 50th he did

Jay had never wanted to run a marathon. He did not really like running. Maybe he did not know if he could finish. The longest run in the house was the Great Aloha Run, 8.2 miles. Twenty-six miles was a number that belonged to other people.

Michelle watched the 2021 Honolulu Marathon and made it a 50th-birthday problem. That is the whole origin story of this site, if you strip it down. One person in the marriage was willing to say the distance out loud. The other person was willing to train once it was on the calendar.

They took it seriously. That sentence is doing a lot of work. Serious, for us, meant the long run actually happened. It meant showing up in humidity when the week already had a job in it. It meant the first half at Hibiscus the same year, so 13.1 was a known country before 26.2.

We are not posting a fabricated gun time. If you have the official result, send it and we will put the number on this page. The thing that belongs here either way is the decision: midlife is not a sports car. For us it was a marathon we had spent decades not wanting, and then a triathlon calendar we still have not gotten off.