Marathon: Part 2

Part 1 is here.

And then God sent me a little gift, in the form of a man.  How many times have I found myself saying that?

Around mile 20 our group caught up with Beau Bailey, an acquaintance of mine who happened to marry one of my favorite students of all time. But that’s completely beside the point. Anyway, Beau was running the third leg of the relay and decided on a whim to go ahead and finish the entire race.  I’m no good at math so I can’t tell you how many miles that is, but it’s a lot, especially for someone that never ran more than four miles before race day.  Now that I think about that it makes me kind of hate him.

Beau:

When Beau first caught up with us I wasn’t sure I liked him.  He was chipper.  I don’t do chipper.  He was making small talk.  I don’t do small talk. 

 I do sarcasm.  I do bad attitudes.  I occasionally do the “Shut-up and don’t talk to me while I’m running” thing.  My wonderful running partners understand this and don’t hold it against me the next day, or if they do, they at least have the courtesy to not tell me about it.

Apparently I also do floppy arms:

 But this guy didn’t know me and I didn’t think I had the energy to be kind and courteous to an acquaintance at this point. 

But alas, he ended up being just the thing I needed at mile 23 when I realized I still had thirty more minutes to run and about five more minutes of stamina. 

Beau was positive.  Beau was encouraging.  Beau told me how awesome it was that I had just run 23 miles and that he knew I could run three more.  Beau pointed out where the finish line was so I could focus on it.  Beau also encouraged perfect strangers that were around us.  

Beau was like the Jesus of the final stretch.  We were drawn to his message and we followed him.

(Okay, that last paragraph was a little overdramatic, but you get the point.)