On the run toward their first marathon
Ask the Green Bay Packers why they play the game, and the answer is the same: to win a championship.
But ask 100 runners why they rise before dawn, lace up shoes over missing toenails and face the stiff wind of a frigid spring morning, and you’ll get 100 different answers.
It is sanity for the stayat-home parent.
Clarity for the overworked employee.
Exercise for the weight-loss champion.
Gratitude for the ability to be able to run in the first place.
And the more we run, the more we collect our reasons to keep running. For our health. For our energy. For our stamina. For a loved one, or a friend, or for someone we know who absolutely cannot run — but wishes he could.
We run 5Ks and 10Ks, trails and roads, half-marathons and relays, until the thought finally emerges and then, the bold declaration:
I want to do a marathon.
There’s so much respect in that.
A marathon is 26.2 miles. Of all the fitness trends that have come and gone, from Jazzercise to Zumba, from CrossFit to kettle bells, the marathon has endured as one of the great challenges for the amateur athlete. It was introduced to the world in the 1896 Greek Olympic Games and to the United States when Boston held its first marathon one year later.
Why is it still a bucket list item?
You can’t make excuses in a marathon, you work through it. You can’t cheat a marathon, you have to earn it. You can’t buy a marathon medal, you have to finish.
And we will follow six Milwaukee-area runners who have decided 2017 is their year. They will do their first marathon.
They’ll take us along with them every step of the way, from these early days of training, to their search for finding the best shoes, to warding off the risks of injury, to fighting through fatigue and overcoming self-doubt.
Our six runners will share their stories, from the small setbacks to the training triumphs, in these pages and in videos at jsonline.com/firstmarathon. They will run in one of two marathons:
The third-annual PNC Running Festival Marathon Oct. 15, which is also sponsored by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or the 36th annual Lakefront Marathon Oct. 1, hosted by the Badgerland Striders.
These grand events are the only two fall marathons with finish lines in Milwaukee.
Some are relatively new to running, while others have been at it a long time.
Ronetta Watson, 41, has been a runner since elementary school and ran track and cross country at Rufus King High School.
For at least three of the six, their quest to run a marathon is tied up with someone they love who has struggled.
Stephanie Nottling was inspired by her mom, also a runner, who was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma about four years ago.
“I watched her struggle with treatment and surgeries and not be able to run as much as she wanted to or as fast as she wanted, or feel as fast as she previously did,” said Nottling. “I kind of took that baton and — literally — ran with it.
“Now she’s doing better and we’re able to run a lot of races together, which is great.”
Riley Enright will be running with a friend by his side: Bryon Riesch, a quadriplegic since an accident in 1998 while he was a freshman at Marquette University left him paralyzed. “I cannot do something like this marathon alone,” said Enright. “I will be thinking about Bryon, in that chair, next to me — that will get me through it.”
And our oldest runner, Bill Lamers, 67, gives all of his race T-shirts to his wife, who has multiple sclerosis, and whom he cares for.
Four runners — Wade Snowden, Watson, Enright and Lamers — will be running in the PNC marathon, which is Milwaukee’s only marathon entirely within city limits.
The other two — Grace Kassander and Nottling — will run in the Lakefront Marathon, which goes from Grafton to Veterans Park in Milwaukee.