I spent the weekend in Carlsbad, California. It’s a beautiful community in the deepest, darkest region of southern California. It’s between San Diego and Laguna Niguel. If you’re planning a visit, I highly recommend it. It’s late January, the weather was a perfect 72 degrees. I think I got a little sun. I try not to piss off the readers from Minnesota. Usually at this time of year I’m not down in places like Carlsbad. I’m usually up in Mammoth Lakes. I had a reason to be there. I was there for a marathon. Although I do travel with clients sometimes, it’s not often that I share a room with a client. But in this case I did. It was my girlfriend Serena Scott Thomas. I told you that to tell you this. Serena completed her second marathon. The first one was 11 months ago in Pasadena. She ran this one in 4:16:06, which was more than 22 minutes shaved off her previous time. That’s impressive for a second time out. But Serena’s story is more amazing than that. When we first started dating, she had just completed two half marathons. She was ready to turn it up a bit. So she did what most people would do in this situation. She hired a coach. She turned to a company called Phase 4. This is a hotsy-totsy company in Santa Monica. They have everything from on-staff physical therapists to fitness trainers. By the way, if you ever walk into a training facility that has trainers, you can almost bet there’s an insurance scam going on (in my opinion). One night when I went to pick Serena up for a date, I was reading her training schedule on her fridge. When she came out to meet me in the kitchen, she asked what I thought of the program. I said, “I think it looks great, but there’s a typo. What they want you to do here is humanly impossible.” They wanted her to stay at her anaerobic threshold for 15 minutes for three times in one workout, plus repeat it twice a week. Serena looked at me and said, “You think I’m a wimp?” I said, “No, you can’t do it. Not you, not anyone. It can’t be done.” By definition, you can’t do it. To understand why she even tried it, you’d have to know she came from a military background. Her dad was in the British military. He was a real-life Tom Cruise. The only difference was, her dad was better looking. One day, he didn’t make it back from a mission. He died a hero. But I digress. Serena, being the daughter of man who knew how to push the envelope, tried to do the impossible. She ended up injuring her foot and ankle. For a while, she thought she’d never be able to run a marathon in her life. You know what? She crossed the line today for a second time. I couldn’t get to the finish line so I watched from afar. She did a great job. Just like Dean Lorey, I’m calling her out. I expect 1,000 to 1,500 words on her experience. I love personal stories. I don’t write about Serena much. You may want to look back at an earlier post, like the one about the question “Do these jeans make my ass look fat?”
