Sacramento Bee Article

http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/117184.html

Unlikely inspiration
Dawn Dais ran a marathon - slowly. Now she's written a book to help others get active.
By Cynthia Hubert - Bee Staff Writer

Dawn Dais wants to make one thing crystal clear. She is not a running fanatic. Quite the opposite, in fact. She has never jumped out of bed on a Saturday morning, eager to don her spandex and lace up her Nikes. She has never known the joys of the runner's high.

Yet almost in spite of herself, Dais finished a marathon.

And lived to write about it in a funny new book, "The Nonrunner's Marathon Guide for Women" (Seal Press, $14.95, 220 pages), which she'll soon be promoting in her hometown of Sacramento and across the country. In the process, she'll be trying to inspire others to get active and give something back to their communities.

From her home in Natomas, Dais, 29, chatted with The Bee about her adventures.

Q: Reading your account of Marathon Day in Hawaii in 2003, I could seriously feel your pain. Ouch!

A: I can still feel my pain! I mean, what kind of sport is this? It's torture. My knee was killing me. My body just did not enjoy it. But for me, it was never an option not to finish. Too many people were counting on me.

Q: What was your favorite place for training runs?

A: McKinley Park is great, because it's a mile all the way around it. My problem was that every time I would pass my parked car, I wanted to get in and drive away.

Q: Favorite training food?

A: Oh, man. My treats were varied and plentiful. Normally I'm not a big eater, but my appetite was enormous. I would visualize food while running, and I had no guilt about eating while I was training. Doughnuts. Cheesecake. Lots of carbs. It was carbtastic! Maybe that's why I didn't lose a single pound.

Q: But you were buff, right?

A: My ab muscles were amazing! My calf muscles, thighs. All of my muscles looked really good.

Q: Your erstwhile training partner, "Chipper Jen," must have gotten on your nerves a time or two.

A: Oh, it was irritating. So irritating. Jen was so good at this, and I was so bad at it. She loved all of it, and she never stopped smiling and bouncing around. I wanted to smack her.

Q: It took you more than seven hours to cross the finish line in Hawaii, and you seriously messed up your knee. Looking back, was it worth all of the time and misery?

A: Definitely. Everything good that happened to me after that I attribute to the marathon. There was a shift inside of me that gave me a level of focus and confidence that I never had before. Now I know that I can take on just about anything and get it done.

Q: Are you still running?

A: Not long distances. No more than a couple of miles. But I do lots of walking, and I play soccer.

Q: Tell me about your upcoming book tour and charity effort.

A: We're calling it Dream in Motion. I'm going to take off from here at the end of February and will be gone eight weeks. I'll go to various running events and book signings around the country, and I'll try to raise money and awareness for the effort to rebuild New Orleans. I'll also try to motivate others to walk with me as I pass through their cities. In April I'll end up in New Orleans to do volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity.

Q: Sounds pretty ambitious.

A: It is. It will be quite an adventure. I'll probably be very tired of talking about myself by the end of it. But we're going to have fun, and hopefully make a difference.

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So there you have it, the first of what I’m sure will be just countless articles about me.

Can you feel the excitement?

I’m getting dangerously close to being way too famous for you people.

Ha.

My friend called me today and said that I’m about famous enough that I might want to consider getting a storage facility. That, to me, is hilarious. Cause there are all these famous people (Whitney, Paris, Michael Jackson) who put all their crap in storage and then, oopsie, they forget to pay the bill. Then, oopsie, the storage facility people sell all their crap for like a million dollars. And then the next thing you know we, the public, have even more things we didn’t really need to know thrown at us from websites and (very high quality) tv shows. My good lord.

How difficult is it for people to pay their storage bills, for god’s sake? And don’t they own houses the size of small European nations? They don’t have anywhere on their own damn property where they might be able to keep their private belongings? Really? "Hmmm, wherever should I stash this picture of me with my boobs being fondled? Nope, no room in my dresser drawer, guess it's gotta go to storage!"

So then. I’m in the process of editing my sex tape and I’m also printing up some of my personal photos of me and my meth lab. It was my Christmas card photo last year. Holly jolly.

I was contacted by a local radio show today as a result of the article in the Bee. It’s a tiny show out of Davis, CA, a small town nearby. I’m pretty sure that the fact that I’m hearing impaired and wear hearing aides that like to feedback a screeching high-pitched sound every time something is too close to them might make my radio interview (with headphones) quite interesting. Hearing isn’t that important in radio, right? Right.