All my years growing up I never got involved in organized athletics and did not pick up any particular ongoing sports. Into adulthood I did pick up the habit of running as a way of maintaining some kind of fitness. Mentally my goal was at least 20 min 3x/wk, and for many years I more or less kept that up. However, other than the occasional interesting long run somewhere I never really enjoyed the running all that much* and had no particular further goals.
One Sunday morning in March 2010, at 49 years old, I was at our church as usual (we met at the Youth Employment Partnership building pictured above, at 23rd Ave x International Blvd. in Oakland) and it happened to be the day of the Oakland Marathon (actually the first “new” Oakland–there had been an older race in the 1980s I believe). The intersection above was right around mile 16 and I watched runners go by. The runners were a wide variety of shapes and sizes and I thought to myself, “Wow, they don’t all look like runners to me!” But they all were of course, this almost 2/3rds of the way through a full marathon. And the thought occurred to me: “If they can do it, why couldn’t I could do it?”
And so, that became my goal: run a marathon before I turned 50. And I did! I also caught the long distances running bug and have enjoyed it ever since.
*As I later got into longer distances I came to realize that the first 2-3 miles never feel particularly good (at least from a cold start). All those years I was basically warming up and then stopping!
Russell Yee 