7 in 7

For the last marathon I ran (Nike Women's Marathon '05), it was my goal to break the 4 hour mark. I finished in 4:01:33. When I crossed the finish line I was tired and a little upset, but excited to see my parents' and Dave's smiling faces. The more time that passes, the less I think about the disappointment and the more I simply revel in the accomplishment of having completed my third marathon.

I now have a new goal. I have decided to shelf the sub-4-hour time target and go back to what I was aiming for when I ran my first marathon: to simply finish. I have long been flirting with the idea of running a marathon on every continent, but in the past few days I have solidified my desire to make it a reality. I have decided that I will attempt to run seven marathons on seven continents in seven years. Seeing as I took 2006 off, I will have to run two in one year, but I am up for the challenge. So far, I can attribute to my goal the Hong Kong Marathon in 2004, the Nike Women's in 2005, and I will be running the Rio Marathon this June. In the four years to come I would like to run the Kilimanjaro Marathon, the Gold Coast Marathon, the Antarctica Marathon, and I have yet to decide on one in Europe but Reykjavik and Athens are front runners.

If I am successful, I will be able to join the roughly 180 members of the Seven Continents Club. This will be a very modest feat compared to that of Richard Donovan who was the first person to run a marathon on all seven continents and the North Pole, and was also the first to run an ultramarathon (a race that is longer than 26.2 miles, most commonly 50 or 100 miles) on every continent in the span of one year! I don't think that there are any ultramarathons in my future, and I'm fine with that. For now, I am happily training for Rio, with thoughts of distant races-to-come floating through my head as I run in the Brazilian heat.