Much of life is self-fulfilling prophecy.  If you don’t think you can do something, you tend to be correct 100% of the time.  But if you do believe, Ah!, then no horizon seems beyond your reach.  In many ways, and in many lives, the marathon has been the perfect metaphor to illustrate this point.

Last night one of the most notable programs in the marathon world celebrated its 25^th anniversary with a gala dinner at the posh Intercontinental Hotel in L.A.’s Century City.  Amidst a crowd of several hundred that included city leaders, school officials, program graduates, L.A. Marathon staffers, and long-time supporters, Students Run L.A. (SRLA) recognized the fruits of its first quarter century while seeding the next generation to follow.

The gala could not have been farther from the hard streets of L.A. on which over 54,000 at-risk secondary school students have trained for and completed the Asics L.A. Marathon as part of the SRLA program.   But the distance between the two worlds has now been shown to be illusory, as well, as thousands of SRLA program graduates today move easily between who they once were and what they have now become. Continue reading →