She’s challenged me to run my first marathon ever. I’ve been a runner for five years; so why now, you ask?
Well, like so many great ideas, this one started at an informal after-work happy hour back in May. Grameen Foundation staff were talking about marathons or triathlons they had done, and my wife Emily suggested that I probably would never make the time do to the training necessary to complete a marathon, despite my occasional promises to do so one day. To “prove” that she was right, she offered to buy me dinner at my favorite restaurant, Oceanaire, and triple her personal donations to three non-profit microfinance organizations I was on the Board of – Grameen Foundation (GF), Fonkoze USA and Project Enterprise. She laughed and said that even these incentives would not move me to commit to doing the marathon. All I had to do was to complete a marathon in 2007 and give up my occasional cigar – a small vice that I picked up in recent years – from June 1 until the marathon is complete, and these things would be mine.
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| Exhibit A: The infamous napkin! |
Well, I committed to doing the marathon on the spot, which my colleague Matt Mechenbier helpfully documented on the paper napkin. Both Emily and I signed it and he scanned it in and circulated it to all the Grameen Foundation staff the next day. I was on the hook!
Finding a marathon that was relatively close to our home in the Washington, DC area and where the dates were convenient for my schedule was a challenge, but I finally settled on the Detroit marathon on October 21. We have a lot of friends in Michigan, since our second Chairman, the late, great Jim Sams, was from a well-known Arab-American family there. Jim helped get our work in the Arab World going and we have named our annual fund after him and his wife Betty, who remains an active force within GF.
As president of Grameen Foundation, I’m turning my temporary loss of cigars into GF’s gain. I’m using the marathon to raise awareness and funding for GF’s work. I am determined to make it to that finish line and raise money to help more borrowers as they struggle with their own personal challenges. You can help me along the way. Match Emily’s gift and sponsor my run.
Any contribution, no matter how large or small, will go a long way to supporting microfinance, a uniquely powerful tool to ending poverty across the world. I travel a lot, and training for the marathon while on the road continues to be a tricky experience. But when I think about where all the proceeds will go, it reminds me why I’ve taken on this challenge.
I’ve decided to record the experience through this blog, up until race day (and one final post-race entry, if I survive that far!). This is my first post; please come back to read regular posts in the next few weeks on how it’s going and insights. Thanks and wish me luck – I’ll need it!
