Training Update X (MCM): One month to go

29 days, 19 hours to go...

Well friends, today marks "one month to go" before the marathon. It's been a rainy, humid sort of day, and I did a long effort on the treadmill. I felt good, but with the day of the race approaching I can't help but wondering if I'm ready.

Frank Shorter, gold-medalist in the 1972 Olympic marathon once said, "You have to forget your last marathon before you try another. Your mind can't know what's coming." He might have a point. My first marathon involved 15 miles of joy followed by 10 miles of pain followed by 1.2 miles of end-it-now adrenaline. If that sounds like a roller-coaster experience, it was; certainly one of the more interesting 4+ hour stretches of my life to date.

With that aside, the preparation for this marathon has been much better. I've done several longer efforts, and managed two decent 3-week cycles of track-work. I will probably do two more long efforts before the race, and possible another workout too. I've also done more running in shorter stretches, which believe it or not is an improvement from last time as well, when nearly all my training was done at a walk. And despite my misgivings about readiness, better training and the experience of having done it once already leave me feeling more confident than last time. I count this as a good thing.

So in short, things are going well but also getting "real," so to speak. I feel a curious mixture of excitement and nervous-anticipation, and while training my thoughts, by their own inertia, seem increasingly to wander through thought-experiments of how the race will go. And while I've forgotten a fair bit of my last marathon, I remember enough that such wanderings are rarely unaccompanied by a sense of dear-me-why-did-I-sign-up-for-this-again? It's humorous and terrifying all at once, in a way, and I don't know how the drama will end on race-day. With 29 days, 19 hours to go, bringing these antithetical emotions together for one purpose could prove quite important for keeping a level head.

Happy Friday, friends :)