9(ish) With My Better Half--To Run or Not To Run?

With Derry looming in the rapidly dwindling distance, and only one run left to do before it, I turned to my most attractive running buddy and fiancé--Jared. I told him the target distance for Thursday (7-10 miles), and he promised to take care of finding a route. With Jared yearning for the longer miles we used to enjoy together, it should have been no surprise that the route was on the high side--at 10 miles. (Though later, when we re-mapped at, after an early "detour" it came out to somewhere around 9.)
I headed home, and after patiently waiting the standard 15-minute decompression blather time, Jared led me out the door and down the street.

We turned left, running, stiffly at first, down Mass Ave. Upon reaching the MinuteMan Trail, one of the primary reasons we chose our apartment (location, location, location), we turned into it, striding along a tree and house lined path, every step bringing more ease in the now-familiar motion. A mile or so in, and we realized we'd somehow missed our turn--and ended up on the busy Alewife Brook Parkway. It wasn't until we met Chad, a sprightly runner dashing alone happily, that we were able to get back on track. (At our pleas for directions, he told us to follow him--the next 3-4 minutes were spent with both of us struggling to keep up with his blithely quick trot.)

At last we were back on the trail, and as we ran through shadowed paths along lines of trees and snowy open fields, we at last took some time to spend the miles talking over the topic of the day--whether or not Jared should run the 2009 Boston Marathon.

(Background: My beloved volunteers in multiple mediums--spending a night a week at the Children's Hospital, and spending time as a big brother in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program. This week he received an email from Big Brothers, asking him if he wanted to run the marathon as a charity runner for their team.)

We spent many miles discussing the pros and cons of his running. The cons being that he didn't want to steal my thunder (silly man), he would (potentially) have to give up this season of hoops league, it would be tough to raise the minimum charitable donation ($3000) in three months, and he'd always hoped to run for Children's Hospital if he did run.

(Background: As a once premature baby who spent time in his local Children's Hospital, Jared feels a particularly strongly about volunteering there.)

The pros: With the half marathon in November, and the recent group run cancellations for me, Jared's logged a lot of miles, and is physically in the shape needed to pick up a training program relatively easily. Waiting to do it another year would mean starting over from scratch. Another pro? We could both do our own group runs half the time, keeping touch with the charitable organizations we'd be running in honor of, and run with each other the other half.

Ultimately, Jared decided to see what Children's had to say, as though they typically field a team of runners, the application to run for them has long since come and gone. He emailed them, asking if they had any remaining openings.

With that settled, we continued our run, pausing only for a fast stretch and a slow embrace when a twinkling Orion suddenly showed himself in a snowy clearing. We eased the remaining few miles out of surprisingly fresh legs, discussing the merits of Tibetan vs. Chinese food. By the time we'd hit home, though, we'd agreed on pulled pork and ribs at RedBones.

It was Friday afternoon when Jared heard from Children's, to, I think, his disappointment--the team was full.