A day in the life

Today is national running day; however it is a celebration that has been spread to other countries. As an example, my entire twitter timeline is about today’s event, and I do not live in the United States!!!
But do we really need a running day? What’s the added value of it? We run everyday, whether it’s raining, freezing, hot or snowing; we have to make up excuses to not comply with our social agenda in order to go for a run, and we have to make up funny stories to our bosses when we arrive late at work because we wanted to run “that extra mile”.
For me running day is more like a marketing runners day, because we do not need an excuse to run, we just do it because not running is not an option; and opposite from labor day, we celebrate running day by, precisely, running…and feeling proud because we run.
However, it is relevant for me to publicly inform that today I did something I thought I’d never do: I signed up for a marathon!!! A FULL MARATHON!!!! And I did it today because the Austin Marathon organizers came with the fabulous idea of giving an early bird discount to the first 1000 runners signing-in today! So I fell into the trap and I signed up!
Such marathon will take place in February, 2012; but the idea itself scares me a lot. I know I have plenty of time to train, rest, train again, rest again, and start training for the marathon, but I have to start now at least with the mental part of the marathon; I will be running non-stop for more than 4 hours, and I cannot finish tired.
Perhaps it’s going to be the most important experience of my life, and I am glad I fell into the marketing strategy the running industry has created for today.
So for runners, today might me another day in the life, and like yesterday and tomorrow we will run; but for me, it’s the day I decided to take the step forward: I WILL BE A MARATHONER…