Today's blog post is another of my usual musings about my fitness journey, specifically running and racing. I suppose they might all start to sound the same to everyone, but I always have a lot of stuff in my brain, so I write it down and hope the people that read it get something out of it, even if they aren't runners. I love writing this and so here's the latest entry into my online journal of my life adventures.
A year and a half ago, I wrote about anticipating my first marathon. In that post I went over the fears and hopes I had, and my anticipation of that moment in my life. Not long after, I went on and met that goal. Those of you who know me in real life or who have followed me/friended me on my various social media outlets in the last year or so know that for the past year I have been gearing up to do another one. I suppose I have been pretty open about why it's important to me, but I want to revisit that in case any of my 12 faithful readers of this blog missed it the first time around.
I have been at this running thing for about 3 years now. It all started, of course, with my desire to lose weight and improve my fitness. During the first year of that journey, I made so much progress that my eyes were opened to the possibility of seeing that things that once seemed impossible to be possible for me. During that first year I set and achieved many personal fitness goals, and have continued doing so since then. Along the way of losing a third of my body weight, I went from walking 5k's and 10k's to eventually running those same distances, and beyond. I finished my first half marathon two years ago, and progressed from that to the full marathon a year later.
For the first few days after I finished that race, I was on such a high. I had finished a marathon! I had the medal, the shirt, the pictures, and the sore muscles to prove it! It was one of the most amazing feelings of my life. To be honest, that feeling has not faded since that day, even up until now, more than a year later. But in the weeks that followed that finish, I mentally evaluated everything I'd gone through, from my training and my race day prep, to the race itself. I had known as soon as I crossed that finish line that I wanted to do it again, so as I recovered and got back in my routine, I began putting together a new training plan and setting my sights on the next marathon goal.
That was a year ago. Over the past year I have made a lot of progress in my training, and set and acheived a lot of goals. I gave myself a year to train for a marathon on purpose, in order to have time to get as many good quality training runs in while regular life went on. There were times when I missed or had to modify a planned training run or two, even a couple months went by when from week to week I wasn't meeting all my goals because real life has a funny way of interfering with training plans. I have a lot of things I'm committed to, and as much as I love running, it falls somewhere down around number 4 or 5 in life priorities, behind things like my family, my job, my ministry commitments, and such. But if I have learned anything from doing long runs that take three or four hours to complete, it is patience. Lots and lots of patience. So while the "one year marathon training plan" is not one you'd find on any of the big name running websites if you Googled the term "marathon training", it worked like a charm for me. I met every single one of my training goals. If I missed a run one day, I retooled the next week's schedule until I met the goal I'd set. Then I moved to the next goal. I did long, slow endurance runs. I did short speedy runs. I ran up and down hills. I met distance goals, and pace goals. I did everything that you would see in one of those 17 week training plans, but it took me a year to do it. It may have taken longer than most, but I'm completely satisfied that the training I've completed will accomplish the purpose I had for it.
So as of right now, I am 9 days out from marathon #2. I'm super excited this time around. The first marathon I did kind of terrified me. Before that race, the furthest distance I'd ever covered was a 20 miler, and I'd only done it once. Now, that is of course nothing to sneeze at. But to add 6.2 miles to that is asking a lot of a body. I had a lot of fears that I wouldn't finish, or that I would finish so late that they would have already reopened the streets, run out of medals, and such. I was satisfied when I finished my race in 6 hours and 27 minutes, three whole minutes faster than my goal of 6 hours 30 min. I got a medal, and the right to put a sticker on the back of my car that says "26.2". I didn't care that I came in nearly dead last, only that I had come in.
So this time around, I have a similar goal. Of course the main priority will be to cross that finish line in Santa Monica. But I would sure love to see some major improvements over my previous marathon race. Now, I am running a different course than the first time around. There are some hills on this one that were not on the first one I ran. But I feel that the training I've completed has set me up to improve my time drastically, even with the addition of hills. I will be happy to finish with a time under 6 hours, but I'm shooting for an average pace of 13 minutes per mile, so my "official" goal will be a finish time around 5 hours, 40 minutes. This will probably be pushing it, as my last long run was a 22 miler on flats and I finished with a pace of 13:05 per mile. But if I prepare for the race correctly (nutrition, carb loading, tapering), I think I can meet that goal, or at least come close. And again, no matter what, finishing a marathon is an awesome accomplishment, no matter what time I end up with.
I am so blessed to have the support of a lot of people in my life who keep encouraging me to do what I do. I know that running doesn't really serve any practical purpose in life, on the contrary it just makes my leg muscles look funny and give me awesome tan lines on my arms where I wear my armband and GPS watch. I no longer do it to lose weight, and if I stopped running I wouldn't gain weight again, because the bad eating habits I've conquered are what prevent me from packing on the pounds. In fact if anything, running has made it more difficult to keep weight off, because the mileage I cover makes me hungry. REALLY hungry. But the people in my life understand that running has helped me in other areas of my life, that are perhaps not visible to the eye, but perceived on an emotional and spiritual level. I know that when I get to the starting line in 9 days, I may not have a cheering squad on the sidelines holding posters with silly sayings for me, but I have a huge contingent of folks cheering me on through various connections, whether it's my FB and IG friends, my family and friends in the flesh, or a combination of both. I'm so thankful for all that love and support, and it means a lot to me to have so many wonderful people at my back. The next 9 days are going to fly by, so keep the well wishes coming, because come March 9, I'm gonna need all that I can get!
Thank you again for reading! Until Next time...
-MaryAnne
