2 weekends to go, then BAM!

2 training Saturdays remain.  It’s coming.  Or, rather, I’m coming for it.

 

Sydney Smith said “To do anything in this world worth doing we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can”.

 

From 7 months away the marathon actually looks small; kind of like the moon.  Once it gets closer, though, it gets big.  I find myself thinking about the enormity of the thing every once in awhile.  Big mistake.

 

When I ran the 30k I seriously didn’t really think about it or mentally prepare until the day before the run.  I wobbled back and forth as to whether or not I was going to run the thing, and quite honestly before the RTW I probably would have just skipped it.  I may have even gone down to get the packet and just donated the 35 bones to whomever and slept in the next day (and almost did, after all).  I spent all of maybe 3 hours really thinking about it and really preparing myself for it.  A little like eating vegetables—close eyes, open mouth, swallow.

 

Not with the marathon, though.  I’ve worked too hard for too long.  Every little thing is marathon related.  The person 4 offices down has a sniffle—avoid her.  Another cookie?  Oh, no thanks.  I’m going to have to cart those little chocolate drops of deliciousness for 26 miles through Houston in a couple of weeks.  Stay on the sidewalks and off the grass—you might catch a hole hidden under the blades and turn an ankle.  Run in the dark at Memorial?  Very, very, very carefully.  Remember not to forget that Vitamin C horsepill you rarely took the previous 5 months.  Go to sleep early.  What’s that ache?  Was that there last week?  Will the chafing be an issue on M-Day?

 

Every little thing is magnified.

 

I tell myself I’ve done stuff like this before.  A half dozen MS150s and the training runs tell me that my body can do this.  I’ve done the things that should put me in GRB 5 – 5 ½ hours after the starting gun goes off.  Mentally, though, I find myself falling into the trap of standing back and shivering while thinking of the cold and the danger.  I did this before my first endurance event—I didn’t sleep at all.  I did this the first time I made the trip to Dallas.  I did this when I made the trips to San Antonio.  I didn’t do it before the 30k, though.  I didn’t even think about the 30k.  I just snuck up on that run (or it snuck up on me).

 

If I had finished last year it’d be different this year.  Hell, I probably wouldn’t be running this year.  But if I were, I’d have a finished marathon already under my belt.

 

I can’t help but think about it.  The dinner before will help—I have planning and such to do for that.  Other things are helping me keep my mind occupied.  But that moment inevitably comes when there’s nothing else to divert you from thinking about the thing that’s been your singular focus for 6 months.  I think about crossing the railroad tracks last year on Westpark and feeling every last ounce of energy slipping away as I went up the hill—energy that was helping me ignore the rising crescendo of pain in my leg and ankle.  I think about the look on my “support team’s” face when they see me at the bottom of that overpass and know I’m finished.  I think about the pain as I’m crossing under the freeway and see the sweepers pass me.  I think about reaching the medical tent and being unable to step up onto the curb because I just simply can’t.  Then I think of the realization of having to call the support team and tell them it’s over.  To meet me at GRB, I’m finished.

 

Then I think “not this year”.  This year I finish.  This year it’s personal.  There is no try, only do, and I’m all out of can’t.  There is no next time.  This is it.  The pendulum swings back, the doubts are pushed away, and the focus returns.

 

Tonight’s run will be 3 or 6 miles (I have supplies to ward off chafing, if it works I run 6) and it might feature a little hill work on the TC Jester hill that goes over the railroad tracks north of I-10.  It’s bigger than the Westpark hill, and I have to run it at least twice if I run it at all.