So, I may or may not have mentioned the fact that I'm *ahem* training for a marathon....no big deal, but I like to slip it into conversations once in a while, you know, to make myself sound cooler and more intense than I really am. But, believe it or not, when you run on the main roads in a small town, the topic actually comes up quite often on its own, and it usually goes something like this:
Joe Schmoe: "So, I saw you running the other morning."
Me, not quite sure how to respond to a vague statement that isn't really a compliment: "Yeah, I do that a lot lately--I'm training for a marathon."
Joe: "Seriously? Why would you want to run a marathon? You're crazy! I hate running."
Me, awkwardly trying to figure out what to say: "Oh. That's okay, sometimes I hate running, too, ha, ha..."...and then I change the subject.
I certainly didn't decide to do this marathon for the attention--if I had, I would be most certainly disappointed. Distance running is NOT a spectator sport, and training, especially in my small town, has consisted of quite a lot of alone time for me.
However, with my marathon date looming in the very near future (this Saturday, y'all), I've been doing some major soul-searching of exactly why I'm running such a crazy race.
Why a marathon?
I guess this story for me (like so many of my stories) has to actually start back in high school. I've mentioned before the fact that I was quite untalented in sports, which caused me to feel rather isolated from the other kids in my grade. Nowhere was this more true than in Track and Field.
For some reason, when I was in Track and Field, I always felt like a faker--an outsider who was just pretending to be an athlete so she could hang out with some of the many popular kids on the team. I wasn't fast, I didn't have good form, and although I ran the 1 and 2 mile races, which were my best events, describing me as "mediocre" would be a generous improvement on reality. Don't get me wrong, my coaches were supportive, but because the team was rather large, I didn't get any one-on-one time, and I didn't feel needed or necessary to help our team do well...in fact, our team was usually much better off without me, and I knew it.
However, Cross-Country was an entirely different experience for me. I was still mediocre at best, but there, on that teeny-tiny team (during my Sophomore year, I was one of two girls on the Varsity team), I was needed, I was accepted, and I was valued. I became passionate about running during my Freshman year, and as an attempt to become the best athlete I could be, I read every copy of Runner's World magazine that I could get my hands on, and that was when I read about those elite, crazy athletes who would voluntarily pay money to go run 26.2 miles on their days off.
And that was when the bug got in my system--"Someday," I thought, "Someday, I'm going to run a marathon."
And the thought never left me.
Fast forward about 13 years--I ran all during high school, a little in college, and regularly (although not competitively) on my mission--but when I got home from Taiwan, things changed.
Because of some health issues that were lingering after my mission, I (wisely) let the running lapse, and then, when I got married and then became pregnant with Jack shortly thereafter, my morning-sick, weak, tired body wouldn't let me run without punishing me severely afterwards...so I stopped running entirely.
I tried to run once or twice after Jack was a couple of months old, but I didn't have the passion or the energy for it, and told myself that it probably wasn't a good idea to deplete my body further while I was nursing, anyways.
Fast forward another four years--by this last November, I had either been pregnant or nursing and thus hadn't run for the last four years, when my sister came home to visit for Thanksgiving. My amazing sister had never enjoyed running before, but after having her first baby, she had started running regularly--and was up to six miles per run, four times a week.
SIX MILES! Crazy. I told her I could never do that--but she encouraged me to try, to start, and to not let the excuse of nursing my baby stop me from doing something I had previously loved so much.
So, I went home and tried to run. I made it less than one lap around the track without stopping--but I didn't give up, and I ended up doing an entire mile of both running and walking before I finally quit. It was hard, and quite frankly, miserable during the experience, but I liked the way it made me feel afterwards. I decided to start running regularly--only three times a week, but at least it was something....and my mileage began to increase, slowly but surely. I still remember sending my incredibly supportive sister this text: "I just ran TWO MILES WITHOUT STOPPING!! Whoo-hoo!!!" and she always responded with cheerful, positive encouragement for me.
By the end of December, I was up to three and a half miles without stopping, and that was when my old dream of running a marathon came back to my mind.
"You know, you could run a marathon this next year--you won't be getting pregnant, and you'll be done nursing Maggie in May!" Of course, this thought was immediately followed by, "What a stupid idea--that's crazy. You have three kids, your husband is going to be in the nursing program, and you'll be teaching piano lessons. You won't have time."
But again, the thought wouldn't leave me.
I had some little health scares a couple of months later, and one of the first thoughts to come to my mind was the fact that if I were to have lingering health issues (which I don't, just to let you know), I knew that I would regret not running my marathon when I had the chance.
So, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. I found a marathon that was close enough to the time schedule and our hometown to work for me and signed up (the non-refundable entry fee did a lot to help motivate me when I didn't want to train), then googled up a marathon training schedule for novice runners, picked the first one that looked good to me, wrote it out, and hung it on my fridge.
I've crossed off every week with a different color as I finished it, and there is one last slot to be crossed off--the last week of my training schedule. This week.
I'm so close to this race, I can almost taste it--it's in my thoughts consistently, and my poor, incredibly supportive husband has heard the phrase, "You know, I'm running a marathon this week. Just so you know," probably at least seventy bajillion times tonight...but it's going to happen.
The crazy thing is, I've been training seriously for several months now, and yet when I talk to another "real" runner, my insecurities from high school come back full-force: "You're not really a marathon runner. You're just an impostor. You're going to get to the starting line, and the people in charge are going to say, 'All of you real runners, you can go ahead and run--but those of you who are just faking it, you have to stay here.' You're not really going to accomplish this--you're not a natural runner, you've never been a natural runner."
Isn't that so dumb? I ran TWENTY FREAKIN' MILES a couple of weeks ago, and yet I still have that little voice in my head that tells me that I'm just faking it, that I'm not going to finish the race that I've been working so hard for so long to achieve, that I'm not a "real" runner.
But you know what? That voice is a LIAR.
And I'm going to do this.
Why am I running a marathon, you may ask?
To prove to myself that I can do hard things. That's why.
And that's enough of a reason for me.
Joe Schmoe: "So, I saw you running the other morning."
Me, not quite sure how to respond to a vague statement that isn't really a compliment: "Yeah, I do that a lot lately--I'm training for a marathon."
Joe: "Seriously? Why would you want to run a marathon? You're crazy! I hate running."
Me, awkwardly trying to figure out what to say: "Oh. That's okay, sometimes I hate running, too, ha, ha..."...and then I change the subject.
I certainly didn't decide to do this marathon for the attention--if I had, I would be most certainly disappointed. Distance running is NOT a spectator sport, and training, especially in my small town, has consisted of quite a lot of alone time for me.
However, with my marathon date looming in the very near future (this Saturday, y'all), I've been doing some major soul-searching of exactly why I'm running such a crazy race.
Why a marathon?
I guess this story for me (like so many of my stories) has to actually start back in high school. I've mentioned before the fact that I was quite untalented in sports, which caused me to feel rather isolated from the other kids in my grade. Nowhere was this more true than in Track and Field.
For some reason, when I was in Track and Field, I always felt like a faker--an outsider who was just pretending to be an athlete so she could hang out with some of the many popular kids on the team. I wasn't fast, I didn't have good form, and although I ran the 1 and 2 mile races, which were my best events, describing me as "mediocre" would be a generous improvement on reality. Don't get me wrong, my coaches were supportive, but because the team was rather large, I didn't get any one-on-one time, and I didn't feel needed or necessary to help our team do well...in fact, our team was usually much better off without me, and I knew it.
However, Cross-Country was an entirely different experience for me. I was still mediocre at best, but there, on that teeny-tiny team (during my Sophomore year, I was one of two girls on the Varsity team), I was needed, I was accepted, and I was valued. I became passionate about running during my Freshman year, and as an attempt to become the best athlete I could be, I read every copy of Runner's World magazine that I could get my hands on, and that was when I read about those elite, crazy athletes who would voluntarily pay money to go run 26.2 miles on their days off.
And that was when the bug got in my system--"Someday," I thought, "Someday, I'm going to run a marathon."
And the thought never left me.
Fast forward about 13 years--I ran all during high school, a little in college, and regularly (although not competitively) on my mission--but when I got home from Taiwan, things changed.
Because of some health issues that were lingering after my mission, I (wisely) let the running lapse, and then, when I got married and then became pregnant with Jack shortly thereafter, my morning-sick, weak, tired body wouldn't let me run without punishing me severely afterwards...so I stopped running entirely.
I tried to run once or twice after Jack was a couple of months old, but I didn't have the passion or the energy for it, and told myself that it probably wasn't a good idea to deplete my body further while I was nursing, anyways.
Fast forward another four years--by this last November, I had either been pregnant or nursing and thus hadn't run for the last four years, when my sister came home to visit for Thanksgiving. My amazing sister had never enjoyed running before, but after having her first baby, she had started running regularly--and was up to six miles per run, four times a week.
SIX MILES! Crazy. I told her I could never do that--but she encouraged me to try, to start, and to not let the excuse of nursing my baby stop me from doing something I had previously loved so much.
So, I went home and tried to run. I made it less than one lap around the track without stopping--but I didn't give up, and I ended up doing an entire mile of both running and walking before I finally quit. It was hard, and quite frankly, miserable during the experience, but I liked the way it made me feel afterwards. I decided to start running regularly--only three times a week, but at least it was something....and my mileage began to increase, slowly but surely. I still remember sending my incredibly supportive sister this text: "I just ran TWO MILES WITHOUT STOPPING!! Whoo-hoo!!!" and she always responded with cheerful, positive encouragement for me.
By the end of December, I was up to three and a half miles without stopping, and that was when my old dream of running a marathon came back to my mind.
"You know, you could run a marathon this next year--you won't be getting pregnant, and you'll be done nursing Maggie in May!" Of course, this thought was immediately followed by, "What a stupid idea--that's crazy. You have three kids, your husband is going to be in the nursing program, and you'll be teaching piano lessons. You won't have time."
But again, the thought wouldn't leave me.
I had some little health scares a couple of months later, and one of the first thoughts to come to my mind was the fact that if I were to have lingering health issues (which I don't, just to let you know), I knew that I would regret not running my marathon when I had the chance.
So, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. I found a marathon that was close enough to the time schedule and our hometown to work for me and signed up (the non-refundable entry fee did a lot to help motivate me when I didn't want to train), then googled up a marathon training schedule for novice runners, picked the first one that looked good to me, wrote it out, and hung it on my fridge.
I've crossed off every week with a different color as I finished it, and there is one last slot to be crossed off--the last week of my training schedule. This week.
I'm so close to this race, I can almost taste it--it's in my thoughts consistently, and my poor, incredibly supportive husband has heard the phrase, "You know, I'm running a marathon this week. Just so you know," probably at least seventy bajillion times tonight...but it's going to happen.
The crazy thing is, I've been training seriously for several months now, and yet when I talk to another "real" runner, my insecurities from high school come back full-force: "You're not really a marathon runner. You're just an impostor. You're going to get to the starting line, and the people in charge are going to say, 'All of you real runners, you can go ahead and run--but those of you who are just faking it, you have to stay here.' You're not really going to accomplish this--you're not a natural runner, you've never been a natural runner."
Isn't that so dumb? I ran TWENTY FREAKIN' MILES a couple of weeks ago, and yet I still have that little voice in my head that tells me that I'm just faking it, that I'm not going to finish the race that I've been working so hard for so long to achieve, that I'm not a "real" runner.
But you know what? That voice is a LIAR.
And I'm going to do this.
Why am I running a marathon, you may ask?
To prove to myself that I can do hard things. That's why.
And that's enough of a reason for me.
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