PFA Updates

Jul 20, 2020

(Marathon Training Update #2)

Let us start with another heartfelt THANK YOU to all of our clients who have donated to our “The Longest Day” fundraiser for The Alzheimer’s Association. Not only have we already reached our goal, we have exceeded it! So there is only one thing to do: increase the fundraising goal! Thank you for making this happen!

To anyone still interested in donating to this worthy cause, please follow the link below:

https://act.alz.org/site/TR?team_id=608952&fr_id=13035&pg=team

And now let’s hear from our Leg 2 Relay Runner, our avid athlete Dan Garner:

How long have you been a runner and what other races have you done?

As anyone can tell from looking at my stature, I'm the furthest thing from a distance runner. The only other race I've run in my life is the Towpath Half Marathon in 2015, and it wasn't pretty (turns out training for a race is actually quite helpful). I've been an athlete my whole life playing all kinds of sports. Growing up it was baseball, wrestling, and football; these days it's softball, golf, skiing, snowboarding, and attempting to play soccer with my wife. The common denominator in all of these sports, apart from soccer, is that they don't require distance running, so the marathon relay is a new challenge for me. 

What are you doing to prepare for the relay? How is your training going?

When we decided we were going to put together a relay team, Tom said we weren't allowed to "embarass" him come race day, so that has had me taking my training seriously. I started running 4 times a week at the end of March and have run about 200 miles so far in my training. Over time I've seen the distance of my runs increase while simultaneously seeing my mile times come down. My running form is by no means pretty (my brother-in-law asked unprompted if I had broken my leg at some point in life after seeing me run, so you know it's clearly bad) as I'm a sweaty mess just trying to finish my distance for that day, but I've actually really enjoyed getting into this pattern of consistent running. I think I feel better in general and I'm not gassed out when I run around the bases in softball, which is a nice change from years past.

I do want to be sure that we let the record show that the date of our run was moved up about a month and a half from the original date when the Akron Marathon was supposed to be held because my average pace is most likely going to be slightly slower than my goal as a result (hopefully still fast enough to avoid qualifying it as an embarrassment).

Who will you be running for?

Alzheimer's is an absolutely awful disease. I'll be running for our clients who are struggling / have struggled with this disease. Before starting at Presper Financial Architects I hadn't had firsthand experience with Alzheimer's, but as we've worked with clients over these years, I've seen the effects and decline this disease causes up close. It's hard to put into words how truly terrible it is. I think the Alzheimer's Association is a wonderful charity and the day a cure is found for this disease can't come soon enough.

Final thoughts?

A few things I've learned during these runs:

1) The most important thing about running is making sure you have a superb playlist.

2) North Canton has many more hills than I ever realized.

3) There's a man who often sits on his porch about a mile into my normal route and the highlight of my run is waving to him.

4) Some days, it's just not your day on the trail, and that's hard for me to accept.