My Personal Best, Motivated by Diabetes
On Sunday, October 2, I ran the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon. This was the 30th running of the “most beautiful marathon in America” and Medtronic’s new CEO Omar Ishrak spoke to the 8,500 marathon runners and 7,500 TC 10-mile runners, priming us just before the start. It was great to have him kick it off. Omar cares deeply about diabetes; as part of his own learning journey he recently met with a number of us as part of an employee focus group.
The marathon, billed as the most beautiful urban marathon in the country, was supported by an estimated 300,000 spectators. I wore a shirt designed by my son which he sells to raise money for the JDRF. Hundreds of people along the 26 mile course, seeing my "I love my pancreas" shirt, shouted "we love your pancreas too!!!" Running a marathon, you need feel-good moments, and I had hundreds of them!
The last couple miles, slogging up a hill in the growing heat of the day, I kept reminding myself that the challenge of running a marathon is nothing compared to the day-in, day-out challenge of living with diabetes. My internal voice kept saying "if my son can live with diabetes every day, then I can keep pushing through this pain to get to the finish".
I beat my personal best time by 25 minutes, finishing in 3 hours and 19 minutes (3:19:33), motivated by diabetes.
In addition, Global Hero Lindsey Burch, who you may have read about a few weeks ago here at The LOOP, finished in 4:22:13 and Global Hero Lindsay Gossack finished the TC 10-mile in 1:37:58. These two women both live with diabetes AND run long distances. Now that’s impressive!
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