Chip Gaines Trains For His First Marathon -- And Reveals It's Not as Easy as He Thought

Chip Gaines has big plans for 2018!

The Fixer Upper star is expecting his fifth child with wife Joanna Gaines -- but he's also set a major personal goal for the new year. In a post on the couple's Magnolia Market blog on Wednesday, Chip revealed that he was training to run his first marathon, and that it wasn't nearly as easy as he thought it would be. 

"Monday was my first official day of training, and all I can really say is -- that hurt,” he wrote, explaining that his first run was 1.7 miles, because “the only thing I’m absolutely sure of is that I can run .2 miles."

“I’d been looking forward to my first run for weeks, and every time I imagined it in my mind, I looked strong, my breathing was steady, and I remained fully upright the entire time,” he continued. “Honestly, I thought it would be a piece of cake.”

“Turns out I would have been better off running to the mailbox and back because by the time I rounded the first mile mark, I was gasping for air,” he wrote. “It took everything I had not to keel over right there.”

As Chip explained, his marathon ambitions were sparked by a chance encounter with long-distance runner Gabriele (Gabe) Grunewald in New York City. 

“Back in 2009 Gabe was diagnosed with Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma (ACC), a rare form of cancer—so rare that it only occurs in 3.5 out of every one million cancer patients. But from what I can tell, this young lady hasn’t let her diagnosis or treatment slow her down for a minute," Chip wrote. “After hearing Gabe’s story, I realized two things: I didn’t want to spend another second standing on the sidelines, and secondly, given what she’s gone through, I didn’t have any excuse not to give this a shot.”

See more on Chip and Joanna in the video below. 

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