Image courtesy Paul Both

The L.A. Marathon is now officially less than two months away. Although my training seems to be on track, I’m still nervous every single waking moment. I find comfort in my friends, especially those that I pull a lot of inspiration from (runners who will fly through a marathon and not break a sweat or complain once). One person I’ve especially admired and look to during my internal running turmoil is my friend, Paul Both, an ultra-runner who is currently on similar journey of his own – running across the continental United States… averaging 25 miles a day with nothing but his feet and a support vehicle just in case.

I’ve known Paul since before I ran my first marathon and although running across the US is something that other people have done for various reasons (usually some charitable organization of sorts) Paul’s reason is slightly different and beautifully honest: himself. On his mission statement he says that one of the reasons he is running thisis for all the miles logged thus far in his running career on the treadmill he actually wants “to get somewhere.” That’s a great reason.

At the end of the day, I think a lot of us are trying to find ourselves or run to find the safe place that we’re trying to escape to inside of ourselves. Paul paints a very literal picture by running from point to point (his hometown of Huntington Beach to the Statue of Liberty in New York.) Although the Statue of Liberty does not hold the same symbolic significance to me as it does to Paul, whenever I see him tweet or update his Facebook status I think of my agenda with the L.A. Marathon. I think about how I will run from Dodger Stadium to the Pacific Ocean (which always feels like home to me) and how I hope to find something there that a lot of marathoners want to see at the finish line, a stronger person than I had previously thought myself to be.