Last August, after completing a deceptively tough marathon outside the small tourist and fishing town of Ketchikan, AL, I was given two t-shirts. One of them was for just showing up. It had written across the front, Life is Good. The other says in equally small letters, Keep on Running. When I put them side by side, I thought they provided a quite message for the future.

This second t-shirt was given to me for being one of the seven marathon finishers, and because it was the last marathon of my first 10 years of running. (Now, get this. Editor.) Ketchikan was my 312th completed event worldwide; 282 marathons and 30 longer distance ultras. This count includes 63 events completed outside the USA in 40 countries. It also includes only 10 repeated events.

The unrepeated total (302) and the overall total of 312, may be a world record for the first ten years of running that no one else has claimed. Not a bad effort from August 1992 to August 2002. A rather narrowly focused life; but it's my life after all.

When I began running, I decided to do every marathon in the world. I cut that back when I discovered my running mortality, and that there are more than 1,000 of them. I can only do 35-40 a year. Instead, I set out to do all the marathons in the USA. I have completed 221 of them and should finish the rest next year. About 250 should do it. My marathon total now stands at 325.

I wish you all well for the coming year.