Tuesday, November 27, 2012

A marathon on Sunday? Really?

Well look at me, I'm doing a post.  Not that there's anyone around to read but what the heck.  It is about 5 days out from MY FIRST MARATHON so I thought I'd get a few thoughts down since I didn't manage to even provide weekly updates.  My not so profound thoughts:

  • Training for a marathon is hard.  I'm tired.  
  • It sucks to get sick and then have to travel internationally during training.  It totally messed up any semblance of a routine I had.
  • 18 miles hurts.  A lot.  20 hurts even more.  Not sure about anything else but I suppose I'll find out soon.  
  • It sounds fairly bad ass to casually tell people -- oh, yeah, I ran 20  miles today.  I mean, for runners it isn't anything but for the masses, it is something.  
  • Thank god one of my training runs was in the pouring swirling rain.  That may come in handy.  

Over all I'm kind of meh with my training.  With all the drama of the spring (#stupidstressfracture) and early summer (#stupidback) I really didn't get the solid base that I had when I started down this path last January.  I thought I could manage it that is where the being tired came into play.  I'm almost positive that is why I got sick in October -- probably a bit exhaustion related.  I managed to get the miles in under the plan, but late October I gave up most speed work.  Flat out no energy.  So here I sit at a cross between 'oh I should have waited' and 'lets get this done so I've got a baseline established and then can work to improve'.  HA.  Fickle I am.  

Anyway, on the positive side -- I did get the miles in.  Other than the sick week and then my three days off while I was in Japan, I logged mile after mile after mile. That just HAS to account for something, doesn't it?  The other positive thing is that all my long runs were done with rolling hills.  I had a friend tell me a route that mimics CIM for part of it so you betcha all my long runs were done there.  

In fun running news, I did run a Turkey Trot 10k on Thanksgiving morning   It was a nice confidence booster -- yeah, yeah, only a 10k but I did get a PR (50:57) and came in 7/303 in my age group.  So I can run.  Lets just hope I can run 26.2 miles.