The Secret To A Happy Birthday

(originally published October 14, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)

When your birthday rolls around, you might celebrate by eating in a nice restaurant, or throwing a party, or taking the day off from work and relaxing around the house. Or - you might get up before dawn and run a near-marathon. That’s what my friend Noa did.

As I train for these five marathons, I’m discovering that, well, it’s not so easy. There are times when I’d rather not run. There are times when the weather doesn’t cooperate. There are times when I feel exhausted.

One of the the ways I overcome the obstacles is to hang around others who are pursuing big goals. It’s hard not to be inspired when you see someone else striving, pushing, growing beyond the ordinary. Noa is one of those people.

A couple of weeks ago, Noa turned thirty-six. So, on the morning of her birthday, she ran thirty-six kilometers - just a few kilometers short of a full marathon. Noa ran the first ten kilometers or so in her hometown of Efrat, south of Jerusalem. She then traversed the long road from Efrat to Jerusalem, finishing her thirty-sixth kilometer half-way through the city, conveniently located next to a great brunch spot.

Still Smiling After 36 Kilometers

Not content simply with a solo birthday run, Noa invited all her friends to join her for any part of the run or all of it (full disclosure: my wife, who is training with me for the five marathons, ran the full distance with Noa). I’ve found that people with big goals often include others in their goals.

A native of Pittsburgh, Noa has been living in Israel since 2002. Here in Israel, she met her husband, Bryan, who is also a runner. They are one of the few other couples I know who both run. When not running, Noa works as a nurse and cares for her three children (which can involve a lot of running).

Many people shy away from big goals because they think it’s too late - had they started years ago, they reason, then it all might have been possible. But not now, at this stage of their life. It would be natural to assume that someone like Noa has been running for years. Yet, she only began running a few years ago.

Her first attempt, like many people’s first attempts, was challenging. She tried a single sprint triathlon while six months pregnant (I can’t imagine) and suffered the whole way, hating every minute of it. But a year later, when a friend asked her to run in the Jerusalem Marathon’s 10K to raise money for her sister who had just been diagnosed with ALS, she decided to give it a go.

With six weeks of training under her belt, she still found she couldn’t run the full distance and needed to walk substantial parts of the course. While some would have called it quits at that point, Noa told herself that she’d come back the following year and run the half-marathon. She didn’t need the full year, however, running her first half-marathon just four months later. By the time, the Jerusalem Marathon rolled around, she was ready to go the full distance -all 42.2 kilometers. Since then, she has run about a dozen half-marathons, as well as her thirty-six kilometer birthday run, and is now training for her second full marathon in Tiberias in January.

How did Noa come up with the idea to run thirty-six kilometers on her birthday. “I’d heard of another running group that runs 50K,” Noa told me, “and it started in honor of one of their member’s fiftieth birthday. This year was the first year that I was more or less in shape to run my age in kilometers. Last year, I hadn’t trained enough to run thirty-five kilometers at the time of my birthday.”

Noa sees her running as a way to take more control of her own life and move beyond the genetics she was given. “Obesity runs in my family and I feel happy that I can celebrate my years on earth this way.”

We can all learn a few lessons from Noa, whether or not we want to run our age in kilometers. It would have been easy, and quite natural, for her to give up running, after her first grueling experience with the triathlon. It certainly would have been easy and natural to throw in the towel when she couldn’t run the full 10K distance in Jerusalem. Many in her situation would have reasoned to themselves that they only did this for charity as a favor to a friend, that this wasn’t their thing, and they were now finished.

Yet, Noa did what every successful person does when faced with an obstacle. She regrouped, set an even higher goal and determined that she would reach it. In the end, she not only reached her goal, but far surpassed it.

Birthdays can simply be time-markers, letting us know that we’re a year older. They can also be a time to indulge - throw a party, have some cake, relax a little. Neither are bad options.

But there is a higher level, beyond the milestone, beyond the cake. Ultimately, birthdays should be a celebration of life and an affirmation of life. There are many ways you might do this, depending on your interests - as affirmations of life go, running your age in kilometers is a pretty good one.

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I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!