Chicago Marathon Training - Week 3

I'm down to twenty weeks of training for the Chicago Marathon. I've been blessed the past week in the following ways:

• A chiropractic treatment that really loosened up the Achilles tendon that's been bothering me since November.
• Generous donations from friends and family to World Vision, totaling $510 so far.
• Some fantastic runs and bike rides, including a group run with other Team World Vision runners and a long bike with my brother-in-law, Joe.

It's been an unseasonably cool spring in Minnesota, and while that makes for some cold feet while bike riding, it's made for some great runs.

The Chicago Marathon will be the sixth marathon I've raced since 2009. I've learned something different every training cycle, and my training for Chicago will probably be the most unique of all the marathons. Rather than setting goal mileage for each week, I'm writing in goal workouts, and running based on how I feel that particular day.

While I have been enjoying most all of my training thus far, the best part has been running for Team World Vision. Being part of the global community has been one of my passions since I moved to Oahu when I was 10 years old. Praying for peace, social justice, and the spiritual wherewithal for all people, rich or poor, slave or free, righteous and unrighteous, brings me amazing joy.

I know I'm no better than any of these people, and I realize that any support I can offer to my fellow human beings is a drop in the bucket of human need. However, I invited any and all of my readers to join me and support me for the next twenty weeks as I train for the Chicago Marathon while raising money for World Vision.

Thank you for all your support thus far. I'll leave you with this little tidbit from a letter written to the Christian church in Ephesus:

¹¹ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴ We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.