40 @ 40

A few weeks before Wil's 40th birthday he came to me with a proposal.

"What if we run 40 half marathons in the year I turn 40."

I laughed.

We had watched the "Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man" documentary a few weeks earlier, and loved watching his ups and downs as he ran 1100 miles around the UK and raised a load of money (200,000 pounds or so, I believe) for Sport Relief. It was completely inspirational -- and we loved his idea of running at least 27 miles a day, 6 days a week, over 7 weeks. Spectacular. I suppose I should point out that Eddie wasn't a runner... at all... when he started. And he got faster over time.

Wil proposed that we run a half marathon most weekends -- after all, if we do 40 weekends straight, we'll have nearly three months off at the end, right? And if we take a page from Eddie's book, not all of the runs -- indeed, not all that many of the runs -- need to be "organized" runs.

Once I agreed to the principle of the challenge, Wil got to work, finding a couple of races in Florida that were scheduled while we were going to be down there for his birthday. Well, we've returned from the trip (race reports to be posted as soon as I get some time to scribble them down...) and I think things will be fine. Two down, 38 to go.

40 @ 40. Wow.