On a beautiful weekend morning a couple of months ago, I sat around the backyard with a few friends and we decided to run a marathon. The conversation started, everyone partially joking. Then suddenly we were looking up stats on the marathon and talking about training plans. Before I knew it, four of us had committed to take on the adventure that is the Moab Trail Marathon. This will be my fourth marathon distance race and I actually feel pretty excited about it. I have been delaying signing up for a race for a long time partially because I haven't been running a ton and didn't want to risk injury. But also because I just wasn't motivated. I felt very Blegh about running and didn't want to commit to something that my heart just wasn't in. But this one feels right, and I am grateful to have a wonderful group to train with.
So here I am, a month and change into training and it's been an interesting process. Because I have the experience with marathon planning, I drew up schedules for our little group and we have been following them fairly diligently. Well… sort of diligently. We have been doing our best. Four people with four full lives trying to keep to a training schedule as adults isn't the easiest, but we are doing our best. Sometimes we all get to run together, sometimes not. Sometimes we have to substitute elliptical workouts for actual runs. Sometimes we just skip runs entirely. But that is okay with everyone because the goal is to finish come race day. And therefore I am grateful for the laid back nature of this group.
Our training schedule isn't anything too crazy. Since none of us are shooting for a time goal, just trying to finish the race, I made our plans on the easier side scheduled by mileage. Here is a sample month of our training plan:
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| August's Training Schedule |
When you sign up for a race after about a month of training the fear sets in, that you won't be able to finish or that you're not training hard enough. But the coolest part is that as I began to talk to other folks about running this race, I found more and more people who are training for this marathon as well, and will be there on race day. I love heading to a start line of a race and seeing people I know it is incredibly motivating. And we will even have a cheering section of friends and family coming out to join us!
So I am genuinely very excited to run this race (yes, I know I've said that about 5 times now). It has been a long time since I felt excited about running so this is somewhat of a big deal for me. I was worried for a while that I had lost the drive / the push / the fire that I felt for running. Running is not something I do to stay in shape. It's not a sport that I do for "fun." Running is not some surface activity for me. Curro, Ergo Sum. I run, therefore I am. I have those words tattooed on the ridge of my left quad. Running is all that I am and all that I have become. It is how I get through tough times, and the sedative for my at-times overly obsessive, frantic brain. I am nothing if I am not a runner and in the last year I lost that somehow.
I lost the love I had felt for the sport that defined me. I became annoyed at the consistent injuries that pained me. I became bored by the monotony of feet and pavement. I disconnected with myself. And that was really hard for me. The hardest part of losing yourself is accepting it and then finding your way back. Physically and emotionally, it is an incredibly challenging process. Let's start with the physical, you have lost the endurance of a distance runner, so 6 miles is now a long run instead of a short one. That in turn hurts your pride because you are ashamed that you put so much time between you and your last run. So you don't want to admit that now a mile takes you 13 minutes to "run" and you are out of breath or need to take walk breaks, when you used to run a 9 minute mile without an issue. You don't want to tell anyone that so you run at the earliest crack of dawn or under the cover of night. You feel your body jiggle in all sorts of places it didn't before, so you run back roads where you probably won't be seen. And I haven't even begun to mention the soreness you will feel throughout your body and how long it take you to recover from 3 miles. Finding your way back and challenging all of the factors pushing you away is like moving a mountain, but you push and fight and try and then suddenly...
Three miles feels short, like a warm up for a longer run. You look forward to Saturdays out on new trails, because running means exploring. You still take walk breaks because you don't care at all what other people think and it helps you. You re-learn the lessons of form and hydration and don't ever take water or cool weather for granted. You fall back in love with the sport you thought you'd lost. And then you're back, just like that, you are whole and good and back. That's what I love most about running, it will always be there for me. Through the fads of new shoes, minimalism and Hokas, through speed training and distance training, through mountain running and elevation changes, and through the different corners of my heart, running is always there for me. I can always come back home by simply lacing up my shoes and heading out on the trail.
So here I go (again), hoping that this time it might be a little different and I keep the love I know I have for running alive and well. Wish me luck.
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