I’ve had a love/hate relationship with marathon training all along, as I think probably most runners do. As the training program draws to a close, I’m reflecting on some of the things I’ve loved…and not loved.
Love: The Plan
Do you know how easy it is to get up and just do whatever it says on the schedule? Super easy! I didn’t think about it much in advance. I usually didn’t know on Monday how far I would have to run on Friday. I just got up, checked the plan, and did what it said.
Not Love: When the Plan Said FAR
Seeing “18” or “20” on the day’s to-do list was a little daunting, but you’ve just got to get out there. The truth is, you’ve got to trust the plan: it had me ready for those runs. Knowing they were coming up was, in many ways, harder than actually running them.
Love: How Easy It Now Feels to Run Five Miles
After about two months of training, five miles was the “easy” day, and you know what? It DOES feel easy! It feels GOOD! I can run it with long, strong strides, and I feel the way I think my puppy must feel when he gets let off the leash at the park and takes off full speed ahead.
Not Love: Achy Knees
At about three months in, with just one month left before the marathon, my knees started to hurt. Things were going so well, I thought I was going to avoid that, but there are only so many miles on concrete your body will put up with. My knees began to protest, and it made some of those longer runs very uncomfortable. (I did take four days off to ice and heal.)
Love: Rest Day
Nothing feels quite as incredible as giving it a rest, knowing that you’ve earned that rest.
Not Love: The Time Consumption
Luckily, I work from home and can vary my schedule accordingly, but there’s no doubt that marathon training takes up some serious time. You can’t run fast enough (or at least I can’t run fast enough) to make 20 miles take much less than three hours. Now, you don’t run that far very often during a training program, but still: Sunday runs were two or three hours; Saturday runs 60-90 minutes, and weekday runs usually about an hour. Add the yoga I always did prior to running and the post-run stretching, and that’s a good amount of time devoted to training.
Love: Being Sleek and Slim
My body on running is super lean. I feel light and quick on my feet.
Not Love: Being Sleek and Slim
My boobs had nowhere to go and yet…they went.
Love: Second Breakfast
For most of training, I would eat before my run and again after my run…both before noon.
Not Love: Giving Up Second Breakfast
During the tapering part of my training, I realized I was still eating more than I needed to be, considering that I wasn’t running nearly as far anymore. Good-bye, extra calories.
Love: The Forest
I mean this in a figurative sense: I loved the big picture of training, having a goal, and working steadily toward it.
Not Love: The Trees
The forest, of course, is made up of trees, and in the case of marathon training those trees are each a mile on the road. I had to keep the big picture in mind to make it worth running three hours worth of trees on a Sunday.
Love: The Running Community
If you follow Your Body Best on Twitter, you’ll know I tweeted regularly about my runs, and I loved keeping up with the runs my followers were on, too. Runners, and all exercisers, really, tend to be very supportive of one another. Even during my runs in Medellín, especially on Sundays, I would see some of the same people each week. They would wave, give a thumbs up. Once a runner fell into pace beside me and we got to talking: he was an experienced marathoner and really gave me a lot of encouragement and tips for tackling the race. I’ve cherished those little moments and will take them with me to the starting line on June 7.
Have you ever trained for a marathon? What did you love about it? (And not love?)