What Inspires Me

I've written here before about my running inspiration, Greg.

Now I'm about to start training for my second marathon. Team in Training is running a "What Inspires Me" campaign right now, and I'd like to elaborate on my mission statement and talk about why I'm doing this all over again.

To tell the truth, after I ran my first marathon, I never thought I'd run another one. Sure, that race was exhilarating. It was also, at various times, both hilarious and terrifying. It was hot and horrible, but there were also great friends and awesome coaches and Loveless biscuits afterward. It gave me a new appreciation for what my body could do - but did I want to go there again? I trained for my first marathon in the cold. I'll be training for this one over the summer. I lost four toenails last time around - shall we go for five?

But the real reason I'm running a second marathon is that I want to cross the second finish line that Greg didn't get to cross.

When Greg was sick, he knew he would need a liver transplant, and he was upfront with me that the call could come any day - even if he seemed healthy at the time. He got one, a few months after we started dating, in July of 1999, from a woman in her 30s who died from a stroke. We used to joke that having a woman's liver kept him in touch with his feminine side. But the reality wasn't as funny. Transplant recipients often go through bouts of survivor's guilt, and Greg felt this keenly, often wondering aloud to me why he was alive and his donor wasn't.

But it worked. For a year and a half, that transplanted liver worked. Greg's eyes, yellowed from jaundice, turned blue and white again. He went skiing with friends. We went to the beach and sat in the sun and told each other we were in it for the long haul. Greg crossed the finish line. Or so we thought.

That liver started to fail sometime in late 2000. His eyes turned yellow again. He lost weight he didn't have to lose. And so Greg's dad gave him a chance at a second race for life: a piece of his own liver. Did you know livers regenerate? Like starfish? They do.

And so our second marathon began. But it was off to a bad start - think heat, humidity, dehydration, leg cramps, spectators yelling "Almost there!" at mile 6. Lots of hospitalizations. Scary ER trips. We went back to the beach but this time it felt like what it was - a last hurrah. We hit the wall. On New Year's Eve 2001, Greg went back to the transplant unit at Mt. Sinai Hospital and never went back home. He died six weeks later, on his 26th birthday. DNF.

I don't know why he didn't make it across that finish line, when I was sure he would. But I can. He can't, so I will. I'm going to take my body, which has betrayed me in its own ways this past year, and run and run for two of us. I'm going to run through the town we had just started to call home, and I'm going across that finish line in Central Park with my hands in the air and my head held high for the both of us. I hope it brings us both peace.