How to Train For and Run a Marathon Poorly, Part II:
Your pace or mine?
Well, it’s one thing to intellectually envision running over 26 miles, but it’s another entirely to actually do it, as if that weren’t the most obvious statement I’ve ever written. When Heather and I got to the 10-12-mile range that summer, it was getting really hot and hard (“That’s what she said.”). We each played to our strengths: Heather did the mental work and broke down the training runs down to bite-size mental chunks with some really excellent and encouraging pep talks, while I rocked the execution by plotting the weekend’s routes, dropping water off all over Plano and soiling myself in dread.
But even worse than the effort it takes to train for a marathon is the time it sucks out of your life. Running 15 miles after work on a Wednesday in 100-degree in late August Texas heat is one thing because it’s hard (if it were easy, it would be called Your Mom, amirite?). Even if it weren’t, it would still take hours of mental and physical exertion after I’d already put in a full day of soul-destroying corporate shilling. After a few weeks of trying to find the will to train after work, it was all too easy to start letting the weeknight runs slide to the weekends. Like cramming for an exam, more or less--I would bang out some good, long run on Saturdays and all would be good! Trotting 20 miles on a Saturday morning ensured not only ¼ of the weekend was gone in a haze of sweat and agony, but it also guaranteed that I did nothing but eat the entire remainder.
I’d had visions of getting “runner fit” during the marathon training: lean and stringy and sproingy like the Kenyans. First, Kalins aren’t built like that; we’re robust, sturdy things, so it was never going to happen, DNA-wise. But, second, it was really never going to happen after I began to buy a bunch of Ben & Jerry's to “ice down” my knee after runs and ended up eating my therapy.
Then there are the things you don’t self-sabotage: I tripped over Alfie and sprained my ankle in July, fielded a mild case of plantar fasciitis in August, was depressed and neurotic in September (performance anxiety), and fell into full-throttle panic in early October, because by that point it had just sunk in: one does not train for a marathon by trudging 15, 18, 21, 23 miles on weekends and wearing an ass-groove in one’s desk chair Monday – Friday. I was running a marathon in two weeks, and I was going to suck at it.
So to recap:
1. Out of time
2. Out of shape
3. Out of food
4. Out of mind
Check. This thing was going to be a piece of cake. Which I’d probably eat.
