{"id":4710,"date":"2011-04-03T00:25:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T00:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4710"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:36:25","slug":"day-138-running-medals-throw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4710","title":{"rendered":"Day 138 – Running Medals (Throw)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I grew up thinking of myself as a non-athlete.\u00a0 (I was an ARTIST, uninterested in throwing an inflated leather ball repeatedly through a hoop.)\u00a0 Everyone assumed that because I was tall, I must love\/play basketball, but I only ridiculed basketball (because I was no good at it!).\u00a0 I was well into my adult years when I started running on a regular basis.\u00a0 It was the year before I met Melissa.\u00a0 I ran because I had a hyperactive dog and no fence around my yard.\u00a0 She needed exercise and she dragged me along with her.\u00a0 I still didn’t think of myself as an athlete. During the early years of our marriage, my desire and drive to run (now without the dog) came only in periodic spurts, and I could not imagine running more than 3 miles at a time.\u00a0 Not an athlete. In 2007, we were living back home in Indiana and my sister-in-law talked me into running the Indy Mini-Marathon with about 6 weeks notice.\u00a0 Once I committed, Kristine made me run with her on a Saturday morning and it was the first time I broke the 6 mile mark.\u00a0 I was huffing and puffing (and slowing her down), but I DID IT.\u00a0 I was hooked.\u00a0 The Mini itself was quite an experience.\u00a0 35,000 people elbow to elbow at the starting line.\u00a0 Little garage bands performing along the route.\u00a0 Getting passed by gray-haired men as if I were standing still.\u00a0Part\u00a0of route winds around the Indianapolis 500 race track.\u00a0 That’s halfway – and as I ran that section, I could watch the big screens showing\u00a0reporters interviewing the race winners!\u00a0It took me over 2 hours and 20 minutes to finish the 13.1 miles, but I did it.\u00a0 I was officially an athlete! I ran again the next year and the next.\u00a0 When I turned 40, I ran a full marathon as part of my mid-life crisis.\u00a0 (Much more affordable than buying a convertible.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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At the end of each race, volunteers are there to hang a medal around your neck.\u00a0 They are all quite big and gaudy and all the racers wear them with pride. Once at home, my medals went into the closet.\u00a0 The sense of accomplishment was real enough to me that I didn’t feel the need to display the medals where I and others could see them often.\u00a0 So why keep them at all?\u00a0 What am I going to do with them in the future?\u00a0 With the passage of time, they will only become sad reminders of something I once did … something I was once able to do.\u00a0 Who needs that?\u00a0 Tonight I threw them in the trash.<\/p>\n\n\n

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All but the first one.\u00a0 It was actually the smallest and it holds a bit more meaning than just the running.\u00a0 That year, the race bib came with a free pass to a Saturday morning pancake breakfast and qualifications at the Speedway.\u00a0 I took Ida and Dats – who were looking super cute in their baseball caps and sunglasses.\u00a0 Ida spilled syrup all over the front of his shirt.\u00a0 And Dats couldn’t stand the noise the cars were making as they zipped around the track.\u00a0 But it was a real father-and-sons day and an overall pleasant memory.\u00a0 I’m going to hold on to that first medal and put it in my box of memories to keep…<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ida and Dats looking so cute in 2007!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up thinking of myself as a non-athlete.\u00a0 (I was an ARTIST, uninterested in throwing an inflated leather ball repeatedly through a hoop.)\u00a0 Everyone assumed that because I was tall, I must love\/play basketball, but I only ridiculed basketball (because I was no good at it!).\u00a0 I was well into my adult years when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4711,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710\/revisions\/4711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}