This is not a picture I’d typically want to share on the internet, but in the process of trying to get this blog up and running again, I kept getting hung up on trying to make things perfect. Then, I remembered one of my favorite all-time quotes, “If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives,” from Lemony Snicket.

The photo above was taken about six months ago after my first marathon training run. It was a 3.5-mile easy run, and it rained harder than I was expecting, but I completed the run anyway. I remember taking this picture and seeing the joy on my face because I had just done one of my favorite things in the world and was embarking on a journey to complete one of my lifetime goals. The more I look at the picture now, the more I can see how crazy it looks. I’m drenched with a combination of rain and sweat, my hair is all over the place, and if you look closely enough, you can see the cluttered countertops of my kitchen. But in the moment when I took it, all I saw was the spark in my eyes and the joy I could not contain because I was training for a race again.

My first training run was not in perfect conditions, but I ran anyway. The photo I took after was not perfect, but I captured the joy anyway. This blog will be far from perfect, but I’m going to document my experience anyway. I would love it if you joined me along for this journey.

I’ll briefly catch you up, because somehow seven years have already passed since I started this blog. So to recap: I’ve bought a house, graduated from optometry school, got married, sold the house, moved three times, and somewhere in there also ran two half marathons. The second was the Boston Half Marathon last November, and not only did I PR, but I also ran the entire race. It was the first half marathon where I finished and thought, “yeah, I could do a full.”

I decided 2026 was going to be the year I ran my first marathon. I mean, 2026 is kind of the perfect year to do so. It basically is the unofficial year of the marathon. I started my training the last week of May with the goal of running a race at the end of October or early November. I trained consistently for about seven weeks, and then life does what it does and got in the way.

Around the end of July we learned that we would be moving from Virginia back home to Missouri by mid-September. While we had been planning on moving back to Missouri at some point, we were thinking it was going to be more of a 2027 thing and not a 2026 thing. Again 2026 was going to be the year of the marathon, not the year of the moving home to Missouri. As you can imagine, needing to move halfway across the country on a rather short timeline was stressful. Moving states as an optometrist is also stressful, because not only did I have to leave my job, but I also had to go through the licensing process for a new state and find a new job. So, all that being said, training for a marathon ended up far on the back burner.

For weeks, I convinced myself that 2026 was still going to be the year of the marathon. I kept researching ways that I could safely hop back into to training and train enough that I could still safely finish the race. With the best of intentions I adjusted my training plan to make it more manageable and I would go on one run. And then life would keep me out of my running shoes again for weeks. At one point I even delusionally signed up for a race. (Speaking of, I need to either change my race or postpone that to next year soon).

So, as it ends up 2026 will not be the year of the marathon for me, but 2027 is just around the corner and it is looking promising.