Running for Your Life: Nova Scotia Marathon

K and I did it! My daughter ran every step of the half and I “cruised” (ran-walked) the full in what was bar none the most memorable marathon of my life. Just when I thought “the marathon” stirs the predictable along comes the pristine, no frills, no chip-time run of a lifetime, the 44th annual Nova Scotia Marathon.

Photos to come in this space. Now, though, it is time for this: love and admiration for my road darling daughter that I shout from the Brooklyn rooftops. She (the young woman on the right side panel of this blog) who greeted with a proud, joyous smile when I needed it most back at the 17-mile mark during the Pittsburgh Marathon in May 2010. A runner. Just like her pops.

To be with her at the start, with only two hundred and change runners in tiny Barrington, Nova Scotia, at 8 a.m. July 27, among us, and then hailing me at the finish line at Barrington Passage at the finish line on that hot sunny day more than four hours later, cheering me in our identical subway-chair orange marathon Ts, is a memory that will always stay with me. K was no bystander this day, four years after that rainy day in Pittsburgh, but the effect on me was just the same, pushing me to finish on the run, the hardest and happiest that I can remember.

What, I ask, is better than that? Outside of celebrating a certain 25th wedding anniversary next month, it beats me. It sure as hell beats me.

Next: Running for Your Life: Light in August


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