For the last two weeks, the preliminary training schedule has had me running 4 days a week for 30 minutes each day without stopping. These two weeks are considered the last "official" weeks of the "preliminary" training.
Things have been going well. Physically, I feel great . . . no aches and pains. I don't really feel faster, and I don't really feel stronger, but I've come to realize that this huge physical transformation that I was hoping to witness in my body, probably is not going to occur. That's okay. I still want to run.
I found this quote the other day and really liked it:
"There's nothing more to becoming a runner than running. It isn't how fast or how far you run. It isn't even how long you've been running. It's only that you run that makes you a runner."
I still often think about whether I am cheating myself out of part of this experience by not dedicating myself to resistance training to enhance my running or to losing weight to make myself more efficient. I AM worried that as my mileage increases, the physical demands will become too great, and I won't be able to continue. Maybe, I'm kidding myself. I've had several people tell me, "7 months is no where near enough time to go from being a couch-potato to a marathon runner." I believe those people. I guess I just keep hoping that since my program is so basic with the goal literally being just to finish the marathon, that somehow I'll be okay.
I'm just keeping my eye on each week and trying not to get too worried about the 18 miles I have to run in December. Twice. Honestly, I felt the same type of fear in Weeks 1-4 of my preliminary training when I thought about trying to run for 5 straight minutes in Week 5. Remember this post? Even to me it sounds silly now, but at THAT time, it was the same degree of "real" to me as thinking about the 18 miles in December feels right now. So, I will just take it week by week.
Dark Wednesday
These last two "preliminary" weeks have gone really really well . . . with one exception. On Wednesday August 19th, I missed my first run. This really saddens me to write about, but I guess it would be even more sad if it had derailed my program. It hasn't. I got right back out there on Friday and didn't miss a day the following week. However, I feel I must "come clean" about what I will refer to as "Dark Wednesday."
I don't even have a good reason or a particularly good story to tell about Dark Wednesday. I set the alarm and got up and got dressed to go running like any other scheduled work-0ut day. I was feeling particularly tired (not physically, just sleep-deprived tired). I got up and started readying my equipment, and all of a sudden said, "No, I'm too tired." I laid down on the couch, in my running clothes, and rested. I didn't even sleep. I couldn't fall back asleep . . . probably mostly due to the guilt. How lame is that? I mean . . . if I'm going to skip a run, I should sleep in and really get something out of the time that I am not running. I think I reasoned with myself that I could just do it on Thursday, and everything would be fine. Everything WAS NOT fine. For reasons I've discussed earlier, I didn't do it Thursday either.
But Friday morning, I was back out there (even running with a belly full of Mexican food from a late-nite dinner with the fam the night before) and things were back on track.
What I learned from that morning is that skipping the run feels worse than the additional rest or sleep feels good. It also reinforced my theory that if I don't do it in the morning, I'm not going to do it in the evening to make up for it (I could have ran both Wednesday and Thursday nights to make up for it), and I'm not going to do it on Thursday morning either.
I'm hoping not to have to test this again. Of course the likelihood of me NOT missing another run from now until January 17th is pretty slim (whether it be from sickness, tiredness or travel), so at least I know that all I have to do is pick up where I left off and not turn it into a training derailing event.
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