{"id":168,"date":"2009-11-17T15:43:14","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T21:43:14","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T05:00:00","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/?p=168","title":{"rendered":"Saved at Mile 21"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my last post<\/a> I described my first marathon, in all its ignominy. It was hot and I started out too fast, and I hit the proverbial wall at mile 18. At that point, disappointment and pain led to dark thoughts \u2013 should I just give up? But I had something to keep me going, waiting to save me at mile 21.<\/p>\n

My good friend William Howard has run several marathons, and when he heard I was running my first he made a remarkable offer: he would come to San Antonio, meet me at mile 21, and run the rest of the race with me. He knew all about hitting the wall and knew that a little encouragement for the last five miles of a marathon went a long way. He sure was right. Even though I hit my wall a little earlier than most, I could keep myself motivated with chants of \u201cthree more miles till William\u201d, then \u201ctwo more miles\u201d, until I got to the 21 mile marker. He ran and walked (mostly walked) with me for the rest of the race, and I\u2019m not sure I would have finished without his help. Thank you, William. An inspiring example of true friendship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my last post I described my first marathon, in all its ignominy. It was hot and I started out too fast, and I hit the proverbial wall at mile 18. At that point, disappointment and pain led to dark thoughts \u2013 should I just give up? But I had something to keep me going, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}