"There's 10 days left. Oh dear."
That was my first thought upon starting this long, long, immensely long-overdue post.
In short explanation, I'm fighting off plantar fasciitis, and had no motivation to gripe about it on this here blog. Just know that, yes, I've been taking it easy, trying to find cardio-workout substitutes for running that involved low/no-impact and as little time as possible on my feet. And with about a week until the actual marathon, I'm nervous about finishing in decent form.
I'd like to talk a bit about the mental battle I've been waging against those feelings of anxiety. I go back and forth with how confident I feel about finishing the race. A major difference in my training (this time around) has been the sheer fact that I've been doing it ALONE. And with no one else puttering along beside me to gauge my progress from an objective standpoint, I've had to become comfortable with assessing where I'm at and what I need. I've had to become my own coach, and for some reason, I don't trust my own coach voice. The coach in my head is young, nervous, and brutally honest. In fact, she's a little uptight about doing everything by the book, and since I've experimented with workouts and done more timed runs than distance-focused runs, she's basically tearing her hair out because she's got no point of reference anymore. So, I've had to coach myself into being relaxed about the process, and trusting that I've done the best I can at this point in time. Nursing an injury right now, it's hard to say I've done my best, because perhaps I've pushed past the point of balanced training. Time will tell. Literally. In like, two Saturdays from now, I'll be able to tell from the marathon time on my wristwatch.
But, the stakes are pretty high for me with this distance running - here I am, four months into training, through an unbearably hot and humid summer, in New York City, the land of cement and steel, and what happens if I can't finish the marathon I've set out to do to mark the advent of my 30s? What was the point of all that training if I can't even get halfway? What if I have to drop out, or what if I bonk out at mile 20 and end up walking for so long that I don't finish in under 5 hours and they close the race course on me and I have to hitchhike back? What if I have to crawl across the finish line because of the pain? What if I have to get escorted off the course by EMTs, and then I have to live through my 30s knowing I had my best years in my 20s? WHAT WILL IT ALL MEAN.
I am absolutely headed for an existential crisis here, one way or another.
So my dad put it in perspective: You don't sign up for a marathon in order to finish it. You sign up for the marathon to commit to the training.
And I just had to ask myself whether or not I committed to the training. Survey says Yes.
And that in and of itself is the real accomplishment. Not finishing the marathon. That's like the icing on the cake: you finish running 26.2 miles, and then comes the realization that all that training was the actual accomplishment, not the 5 hours of plodding along you just did on some dirt road with water stations.
All the days you didn't want to get up and go out running. All the days you felt too tired or wanted to go socialize in the park instead of running for two hours alone. All the inclement weather and staring locals. All the times you went to find some running clothes but they all stink like Fritos so you had to have a stinky Frito run. All the chafing, the dehydration, the planning and plotting and preparation. For months, logging the workouts, tracking how far, can you go faster tomorrow, can you finish just one more hill today, can you not walk those last five minutes.
I'm hoping that realization happens for me this time around. I'm hoping the training means something at the end of this.
