The decision to run a half-marathon

I have been thinking for months about what I might do as my Dare for this year's A Dare to Remember campaign. Since I'm working part-time for the Stephen Lewis Foundation on mobilizing for A Dare to Remember, I have been thinking about this even more over the last few weeks.

Well, last Tuesday (my birthday), I decided that my Dare would be to run a half-marathon.

I'm a baseball player, a basketball center, a former shot putter, etc. However, I'm barely a runner.

Since I started going to the gym in January, I have been doing some jogging (anywhere from 1.5-2.5 miles) and way back when in high school I was on the non-varsity cross country team (i.e. they let me run, but since my time was usually almost double that of the winners, I wasn't exactly the team's key member . . .). I would guess that the longest distance I've ever run was 5 miles and that would have been 11 or 12 years ago.

Well, that's all about to change because on October 17, 2010 (during Dare Launch week), I'm going to run the Goodlife Fitness Half-Marathon in Toronto.

I suppose that means, I'd better get training. I gave myself a week to get started because the conference I've been working on planning (Activism and the Academy: Struggles Against Hegemony) was this weekend and my friend Val is in town visiting. But Tuesday I'm starting my pre-training (going for a jog). Then I have to buy good running shoes that are made for the type of feet I have and the way I run, go to the chiropodist to get orthodics since my right leg is almost an inch longer than my left (I would need to do this even if I weren't doing the half-marathon), and buy a training book or find a good one online.

I'm not going to start actually advertising my blog or my plan to run the marathon until the ADTR website for 2010 is up and running (which should be in the next two week) so that I can set up my fundraising page. But since I had a few minutes on my computer today, I decided I'd get my blog set-up.