Lately, I’ve been trying to purge my life of things I don’t need or use.  It’s been really good to sell or give away things we don’t really truly use.  It’s clutter, and we have enough storage problems with a wife that packs things worse than a rat (BTW, please help with Mandy’s Fundraising for her Marathon).  Anyways, we have gotten rid of the following things:  A treadmill, patio furniture, a sofa bed, an external hard drive, an airport express, a large dog cage, comic cards, 35mm film camera, a portable dvd player and DVD’s.  I’m still working on a selling  my comic book collection.  It feels good to get rid of things that are just laying around not being used to their full potential or often.  I’m a huge fan of the site Unclutter.com and enjoy reorganizing areas, and storage because our house is small enough as it is.  We’re also trying to make our design style minimalistic, which in general just looks better.

I’ve also realized the importance of “less is more” (I also finally get the linux joke in that too).  The less you have the easier it is (period).  A smaller car is easier to wash, same goes for a smaller dog, less house less storage, no trees no lawn maintenance, etc.  I appreciate the size of our house, it keeps our mess under control.

We’ve also been trying to realize that we don’t need ‘things’.  Things are just things, you can get more or less of them.  It’s funny growing up, all these things you were advised on make sense.

Mandy after a 21.2mile run taking an ice bath

I never understood the desire of running a marathon (maybe for health reasons?).  I just thought you would train for a few months, then get to the marathon and pace yourself and keep pushing yourself and that’s it.  It’s much more than that…

Mandy’s been training for her January 11th Disney Marthon since around the end of July.  The time training, ice baths, the money spent on shoes; equipment, clothes,  and power packs for her long runs has been fascinating.  She first started to run 2-5 mile runs a couple times a week and once a week she would have a long run.  Her first long run was 8 miles, second was 10, third was 16, and now she’s up to 21.2.  These runs occur anywhere between 5am-7am in the morning (the longer the run the earlier the start).  I watched her first official 5k, which is a short but still hard 3.1 miles.

Saturday she ran her first official Half-Marathon at the OUC Half.  I never imagined it was that hard till you see your wife, her friend and many others struggle to stay on pace.  I have a whole new respect and understanding of how hard you push your body to it’s absolute limits.

Friday night before the OUC Half we watched Spirit of the Marathon.  A documentary recommended to us that follows 5 marathoners from first timers to Olympic Champion runners.  You’re moved at why these people do it, be it just to finish, or to finish and beat your last time at the age of 65.  It’s unbelievable the struggle you go through to accomplish such a challenging goal.  That really pumped me up for supporting Mandy at the OUC Half.

Mandy and Jen on their first 21.2 mile long run.

At the race, I wanted to cheer Mandy on at least 4 places.  I was able to do so, and the last few places I saw her pass I ran from one place in the course to another via shortcuts (that was hard in itself and I was thinking how can these people run this long!?!?)!  As some of you know I can be pretty loud, and I wasn’t just cheering on the wife, I was cheering on everyone that passed.  I’ve never gotten so many thank you’s before and I was glad to be their cheerleader too.

Marathons are fucking hard!  Pushing your body to the ultimate extreme looks like a humbling experience.  I would do it once to experience such a satisfying life long learning experience.  I would also do it to build up such an incredible endurance!

Now I know this Christmas season everyone is asking for money, so I won’t push it but if you could donate a few bucks to Mandy’s cause that would be very honerable of you.  And Team Mandy could use all your support for the race on Sunday, January 11th, at Disney!