Marathon Training

I started training for a marathon back in October. I would never have considered myself a runner before. I hated running, I was incredibly slow, I had no "technique". I was just plain terrible.

Recently, I've been thinking and praying a lot about my need for perfection. If something I do isn't perfect, I focus more on the failure than the success of whatever I've done. For instance, if I was to run a mile and it took me say 11 minutes at this altitude, I wouldn't have been proud of the fact that I ran a mile, but merely focused on the fact that it took me 11 minutes. "I should have been able to do it faster, so and so can run it in 8 minutes" etc.

This topic was on the forefront of my mind when my friend James called me one day in October. He asked if I would be interested in running a marathon with him in Atlanta in March (21 weeks away). I said no. No way. He said "we'd be running it for a cause...breast cancer". I said "James...there is no way I could run a marathon. period. I'm not a runner, I'm terrible at running" etc.

He asked me to think about it, and I agreed to.

When he e-mailed me the 18 week training schedule I saw that the first week was 3 miles on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, rest Friday, and 6 miles on Saturday. 6 miles was already more miles than I had ever run consecutively in my life. The marathon was looking less and less realistic.

I spoke with James the next day and came up with a compromise. Since the 18-week training schedule would start in 3 weeks, I'd give myself 3 weeks to think about it. I would come up with my own pre-training, training schedule, and see what happened.

My first week was 1 mile tuesday, 2 wednesday, 2 thursday, and 3 saturday. It went fairly smoothly, aside from my unrealistic expectations of what I should be capable of. I slowly began to become ok with "where I am". I realized that I'm not a runner, I never have been a runner, so for me to go out and run a mile in 7 minutes at 7300 ft (the altitude where I live) is just plain unrealistic. I needed to be ok with an 11 minute mile.

Week 2: 2 miles tuesday, 2 miles wednesday, 2 miles thursday, and 4 miles saturday.

The Saturday run was the turning point. I got on GoogleMaps, and mapped out a route that would take me 2 miles in one direction. Then I would turn around and come back. Seems simple enough right?

I started running at the end of my driveway, made a couple of simple turns, and began looking for "A street". 15 minutes passed, no A street. 20 minutes passed, still no A street. 25 minutes passed, still nothing. I began to get discouraged. I had been running for 25 minutes, and if I haven't passed A street (which is 2 miles from my house) then I've been running slower than a 13 minute mile! That's not so good...at all.

At around 28 minutes of running, I decided I would turn around at the next road, and just re-map it from there. I thought maybe I had passed A street without seeing it and would see it on the way back. No such luck. I became pretty disappointed in my performance.

I ran back to my house, and stopped the clock at 55 minutes. I started thinking about what this could mean. Perhaps, I missed the road (both times) and had really run more than 4 miles? Maybe they re-named the road and Google hasn't updated it yet. Or, worst case scenario, I ran for 55 minutes and didn't even make it 4 miles. It sounded like an awful possibility. I realized in that moment that I HAD to be ok with that. I HAD to be ok with where I am. I needed to stop putting so much emphasis on my running performance, when I have clearly never been a runner before. Rather than going straight to a computer to figure out my actual distance, I "sat" with these feelings for a while. I took a shower, changed clothes, ate some food, etc.

Finally I went to the computer. I remembered that I turned around at Furrow Rd, so I Googled it. As it turned out, Furrow Rd was 2.5 miles from my house! I had run 5 miles when I only expected to run 4! Yes...I ran it at an 11 minute pace, but I was fine with that! It was cold outside, I was running at 7300 feet, I was ok with an 11 minute mile.

I knew in that moment that the marathon was possible. I called James, and committed to running with him.