Rewards Start to Show

It has been 2 weeks since I last wrote in this blog. Work and family have been keeping me busy. With Labor Day weekend past us, I'm a month away from heading to Chicago to run my first marathon. Last Friday, we celebrated my wife's birthday. Over dinner, we started talking about the trip with the couple that will be joining us, and finally, I felt a sense of excitement in the group.

Since January, I've run over 400 miles. My training program for the race is on its seventh and final month. I went on a diet, trained for a 10K, joined VIP Running, started exercising and doing basic strength training, took to the pool over the summer to cross train, worked my way up into completing double digit runs, got injured, took time off, did (and still doing) rehab and therapy, launched a fundraising campaign and reached my goal, and now I've made it past 20 miles on a long training run.

The last Saturday of August, I took to the road at 3AM with a group of 9 runners on a long training run organized by my team leader, Daly Berríos. In a couple of weeks, she will be running the Berlin Marathon (one of the five world majors along with London, NYC, Boston and Chicago), so this was her last long run before the race. She recruited her father and the husband of one of the other runners to help us out along the course with water, Gatorade and food...and also to illuminate dark stretches of road with their cars' headlights. Halfway through the run the group split in half according to pace. Each group kept a support car with them. At 6AM, 3 runners joined our group to keep us fresh and alive as we started our second plunge into Puerta de Tierra and Old San Juan. Iván and Rubén also came out to cheer us on. They weren't even running, just showing their support at 6AM on a Saturday. That was very gracious of them. Both completed the Sabrina 16-mile race the following day.

On our way back from Old San Juan, at around 18 mile mark, two more runners joined us. One is a female national running champion, Yoly I think.  The other one is a personal trainer and avid runner. They managed to pace us at around 9 min/per for a couple of miles. I don't know whose Machiavellian plan was this at that stage of the run, but I managed to stay with them until we reached the Escambrón area. From there, since the rest of the group was going for 24, I headed back towards Condado by myself. While crossing Puente Dos Hermanos, I saw a couple of paddle boarders just standing there near the bridge looking into the water. They were following two manatees that had come into the Condado Lagoon to feed on bottom grass. I finally completed  21 miles in front of Chef Treviño's new dive, Casa Lola, which is where we went to dinner for my wife's birthday on Friday. Sand washed up by Hurricane Irene was still covering part of Ashford Ave. I walked down to a 24-hr market (if you can call it that) in front of La Concha to buy a bottle of water and a Snickers bar. I had to ask one the employees for a dollar exchange. Mine were soaked and the vending machine apparently doesn't like sweaty bills. He also let me use the phone to call my wife to let her know I was alive and kicking after completing 21 miles. I planned on patiently walking the mile or so I had left back to Kings Court, but Daly's father happened to drive right in front the 24-hr joint just as I was starting to walk back. I hitched a ride on the back of the SUV after convincing him that I was stinky and sweaty enough not to use the front seat. He kept insisting, though. I used to deliver the newspaper to his house 20+ years ago. That was the revelation of the run, so we'll see if my new nickname (paper boy) has staying power. I doubt it.

Back at Kings Court, I was presented with the picture above. The morning was amazing. The ocean was flat as a pancake and calm wind conditions made it look like an endless blue oil slick. Hurricane Irene had come through earlier that week and kept pulling moist air and rain bands over the island for the entire week. Seeing this on Saturday morning after running 21 miles was plain numbing. But I still willed myself to take a quick dip before heading home. How can you say no to that invite?

Yesterday I broke through the $1,000 mark on my fundraising for Team LIVESTRONG. If you wish to contribute to the fight against cancer and the extraordinary work the Lance Armstrong Foundation does for cancer patients and survivors, please do so at:

http://run.livestrong.org/teamls2011/carlosrentas

October is just around the corner. One more long run left.