26.2 Miles of Passover

For the second time in Secret Knowledge of Backroads' history, I've recruited a guest author. This time, it's my younger sister, Nina, writing about her dilemma this week to train properly for the Boston Marathon, which she runs on Monday, or to be kosher for Passover, which would be the observant thing to do. She smartly chose the former. The kid is training hard and in the home stretch, so don't sleep on her observations or her decorous solicitation for charity:

"Traditioooon, tradition!

"The next week will bring a number of firsts for me: it will be the first time that I run a marathon and the first that I choose not to observe the Passover diet. If you haven't already guessed, the two are related. On April 16, I will run the Boston Marathon (a holiday with traditions of its own, I'm learning), just a few days after Passover ends.

"Throughout five months of training, all kinds of leavened foods have been essential for fueling and helping me run a little bit farther than I thought I could. As my brother, the witty and insightful author of this blog [editor's note: one need not flatter me to be published here], put it, 'Nothing tastes as good during Passover, and you're always a little hungry.' He urged me to eat as I normally would because cutting bread, pasta, beans, and really most everything out of my diet a few days before a marathon would be silly and unhealthy. Eventually, I had to admit to myself that he was right. For a few weeks, whenever he asked what I would do, I said I wasn't sure. I knew that to be smart and capitalize on all my months of hard work, I really shouldn't keep kosher for Passover this year, but intentionally ignoring a defining ritual made me feel uncomfortable.

"I don't think Tevye would recognize me from his 19th-century shtetl, and I'm happy that I've moved far past mending, tending, and fixing, preparing to marry whomever Papa picks. But I value Jewish traditions -- as much as they've changed and morphed to accommodate my 21st-century life. Still, tradition connects me to a larger history; it is an important part of what defines my family and keeps us coming together around a table many times a year.

"Although I won't celebrate Passover as I normally would, I've taken this departure from tradition as an opportunity to think about and appreciate the holiday in new ways. One theme of Passover is rebirth, renewal, and new beginnings, and this resonates closely with one very large part of my marathon training that is bigger than food -- it's Summer Search! As part of running, I have been raising money for Summer Search Boston, a nonprofit organization that works high schools in the greater Boston area to find low-income sophomores who need help realizing their potential and helps them to do well in school, to apply themselves, to try new things to overcome challenges, to become leaders, to go on to college, to be a role model, and many other things.

"So this year, I'll be skipping the matzah, and that's OK. Instead, you can find me running full-steam ahead somewhere between Hopkinton and Boston wearing a fabulously bright Summer Search jersey. Cheer for me, I'll wave.

"If you'd like to donate to my marathon campaign and support Summer Search, click here. Think of it as a celebration."

Update: My sister finished the race in 4 hours and 55 minutes, in 88-degree weather -- the hottest April day in Boston that I can remember in my seven years living here.