Surprise Date Night

from here

 

Rick surprised me on June 12 with a date night to see Spirit of the Marathon II!

As I stepped into his car, he had a bag with a new Fleet Feet jacket and a really sweet card for me, but the movie was a surprise until we got to the theater.  I thought all along that we were going to see The Great Gatsby, since we tried seeing that a couple of weeks ago and we hadn't been able to.  It turns out that our local theater had one showing of Spirit of the Marathon II, and Rick had knew it would be a great date night for two marathoners!




New jacket and nice card 

The movie followed seven runners from around the world as they prepared for the marathon in Rome.  Even though the theater we went to see the movie at was nearly empty, I didn't care.  I felt an instant connection with all of the other people in the theater and to the people featured in the movie.  I understood what the runners were going through as they trained and ran in the marathon and felt surges of adrenaline watching the race.  I got to see a variety of athletes train and run too---not just the people around my pace like I normally have the most exposure to.  The person I connected the most to was Ylenia from Milan.  She was a mother to two kids like me.  You can read much more about the movie and the other cast members here. From their website, the filmmakers tried to "capture the truly international nature of the marathon and how its transformative power has a profound effect on all who run it."  I know what they mean when they talk about the "profound effect" of marathons, since I know the effect they've had in my life.  I recommend you watch it if you get a chance, but I don't know if that is possible since there was only one showing on the same day all over the nation!

Even more special about the night was how Rick had all of this planned for us as something special to do.  Sometimes I fault running for making things so hard for us as we try to fit two marathon training schedules into our lives.  I forget that running is how we first fell in love.  Without running, there would be no us.  Now running is still a connection that we have, thought we rarely do it together anymore.  We still understand what the other one is going through during training, we still know what it feels like when the other one misses their goal by a single minute or two in the marathon, and we still get to enjoy traveling to marathons and starting each marathon together.  Somehow, we've been able to run marathons in almost 23 states together (we didn't do Georgia together but I think we did the rest?).  And we've managed to run 12 of those states after having our kids.  These marathons will be memories we will never forget.  I give Rick credit for finding a movie that unites us with the greater worldwide community of marathon runners, but I credit this movie and date night with reminding me of how running unites the two of us even more.