MARATHON STORY: FERNANDO FALLS…BUT FINISHES

As is the tradition of TBR Dream Marathon, after the race, I post anecdotes about the marathon that I receive in my Inbox from our new marathoners. My inbox gets inundated with stories of triumph, love, gratitude, passion, and empowerment that it’s too much of a waste if only I read it. Through this series of stories (one every week for the next couple of months), may you all be inspired to run a marathon or dream big in your own lives.

I’d like to share with you Fernando’s letter to me.  It teaches us that we can try our best to prepare for a marathon, but we never really know what will happen at any point before we cross that finish line.  A lot of things can go wrong and a lot of things can go right.  What matters most is how we choose to react to the situation and how we let it affect us.  Good thing Fernando decided to run even after he stumbled.

TBR DREAMERS 2013: Fernando Hernandez
Bib Nos. 334

Hi Jaymie,

You can’t imagine, how thankful I am to be a part of this great experience. I actually came very close to not showing up last Sunday.

About a week before the marathon, during my daughter’s sportsfest, I took a bad fall during one of the events. I joined a relay race and ended up with two very large wounds on my knees – as in kneecaps.

Looking back it might not have been very prudent of me to join the sportsfest in the first place, but I entered the marathon with the mindset that it would never interfere with family activities. Anyway, my daughter asked me to join the relay race and I didn’t want to disappoint.

So there I was, the day before the race with two very large wounds on my knees. I thought long and hard about how I was going to do the 42K with injuries to both legs.  The thought of even just the salt on the wounds was just as painful as the thought of the knees bending every time I’d take a step forward. Anyway, the defining moment was when I just accepted the fact that the pain was going to be there from the start and it would be a matter of me being able to grin and bear it. I kept “fooling myself” that my left leg was fine and that I could just drag my right leg towards the finish. The added incentive was the fact that I knew I would be miserable waiting for an entire year to have the chance to do The Bull Runner Dream Marathon again and all that training just being thrown out the window.

No doubt the pain was there, but the encouragement I had from my co-TBR Dreamers (alot of them I don’t know personally but they could tell I was in pain) and Dream Chasers really helped. I really wish I could thank each of them personally because, they really helped me carry on even when I was in a lot of pain and quite miserable during the whole ordeal.

Anyway, through sheer will, (I can’t even call it skill, I just grit my teeth) I managed (somehow) to cross the line at around 7:30, really far off from the sub six / sub 5:30 goal that I really wanted but it was an even sweeter win for me nonetheless, that I managed to even show up and finish this race.

Thanks again Jaymie for doing this. I’m sure you hear it alot but this event has really showed me how deep inside myself I can dig and just what I am capable of. When I first signed up for this race, I did it because I needed a win for my 40th birthday. I didn’t realize how big a win it was until I crossed that finish line last Sunday.