Why I Run: Brent Graeber

I’ve now run one full marathon and three half marathons.  If someone would have told me that I would be running just five years ago, I would have said they were crazy.  The reason I would have thought that is simple, I hated to run.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, I hated it.  I loved playing sports growing up like tennis, basketball and baseball, but whenever the coach wanted me to run then I was out.  Maybe it’s because I wasn’t built like a runner nor did I have the mental capacity for it because running takes forever.  I can’t believe how long it takes me to go only one mile much less anything longer. 

So if I don’t like running, then why do I it?  There are many reasons.  One is that I run to raise money for the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation.   Every penny goes straight to cancer research and I desperately want them to find a cure.  When Payton, my wife, lost her life to atypical carcinoid cancer in 2007, I went into a funk that I hope people don’t have to go through.  Hopefully raising money will help find a cure.  This brings me to my second reason for running.  It takes time.  Payton’s sister once said she measures things in time, before Payton got sick and after, before she died and after.  For me, my life was about time as well.  Time that I didn’t know what to do with.  Running became something for me that took up time.  I still didn’t like running, but I liked that for three hours I would be somewhere listening to music and escaping my thoughts.  It helped that I was slow because if I was fast, I would have been done quicker and that wasn’t my goal.  My goal was to take time.  13.1 miles, no problem I have the time for that, I even want to train for that.

This last reason I simply call “the finish”.  There is a sense of accomplishment, joy, relief, happiness, sadness, pain and pride all rolled into one when I cross a finish line.  There’s always a push that gets me to that line, like the first year for me it was my loved ones who were there at the race.  Without words, but in my thoughts they pushed me to the end.  I’ve always wanted to tell people that, but I got caught up in “the finish”.  All of my half marathons I have raised money for the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation and they were in Nashville at the Country Music Marathon.  My only full was last December in Las Vegas.  This was the only time I didn’t raise money.  I took this one event and ran further than I ever thought my body would take me.  I opened up avenues of emotions that I didn’t think that I had.  In the end, I was in pain, I was happy, I was in tears, and couldn’t express my emotions.  Maybe the lyrics of the song playing at the time could.  It was a Ben Folds Five song called Magic.  How that song came up after exactly five hours and twenty-five minutes of running, I’ll never know.  It wasn’t planned.  The lyrics are “You're the magic that holds the sky up from the ground.  You're the breath that blows these cool winds 'round.  Trading places with an angel now.”  Payton was the push that got me to the finish and to have that play when I crossed put something into words that I simply cannot.

I ask that you simply take any money you can spare this year and donate to the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation, even if it’s only one dollar.  If you are unable to donate, please think happy thoughts for The Little Team That Could as we make our way through the streets of Nashville on April 30^th.  And know that I’ll do everything in my power to finish the 26.2 miles and push forward as I know my will knees hurt, my right shoulder will sting, I’ll get a cramp on the right side and probably even have a little pain above my right ankle, I will push slowly on.  I know what the finish brings me.  I know I can make it.

-Brent