No Finish Line Running goes the North Conway

Sunday, October 25, 2015 · Mike Davis

Good morning! This morning I am blessed to be chatting with you from North Conway (New Hampshire), where our entire No Finish Line Running “Destination Group” spent the night. This morning some of us will be running the White Mountain Milers Half Marathon and others will be relaying the same race. Last night the entire group of runners checked into the Hampton Inn in the late afternoon (with the exception on one couple who stayed next door) and then we all met at the Spaghetti Shed for a group dinner. The evening was a lot of fun as we ate, sipped a few drinks and laughed a lot! It is also great to have spouses, significant others and even a few children join us. I am very fortunate that both my wife and daughter are runners and are around me most the time but, it was great to see other people that are important to our runners. The restaurant was very accommodating to us and we had a room separate for our group that worked out really well. They were also very nice to include “Spiced Pumpkin Bread Pudding” as a special for desert. If I were going to ever special request anything that would be exactly it and I nearly just told them to skip the main course and go right to that! Really awesome! Running is such a great activity for health reasons and I am grateful for that and I really appreciate it as well for enabling me to enjoy such things as “spiced pumpkin bread pudding.” However, the most enduring benefit of running for me is those folks I was surrounded by last night. So many wonderful people that were brought together through “No Finish Line Running” but, are now cherished friends. Running certainly is the excuse we are here and that is a great conduit however everything else is about relationships. Dinner, drinks, stories and laughs were all about last night and even today each of us will be supported by each other as we run. Such a great time and truly what we aimed for when we came up with the destination race. Now personally I am not exactly ready for a 13.1 mile race for multiple reasons. Having been sick for nearly 5 weeks now training has been really a challenge. Yesterday I got in to see a doctor and was given some antibiotics but, it is doubtful that they will perform a miracle. In any event I am here, my wife and daughter will be by my side and together we will go the distance. None of the 3 of us have run over 10 miles, so we all know that we will need each other to go the distance. If we had run 10 miles multiple times and been healthy I think we would feel better but, that isn’t the case. Thankfully we are all accepting that this will not be the day to run for time. I am truly okay with that. Today is a proud day for me as I get to see many NFLR shirts out on the course and that is such a great thing! Events like these are exactly what running should be like if it is something that you want it to be an enjoyable lifetime activity. God Bless! Mike