RunSingTeach

My 11th marathon is in 5 weeks. The furthest I have run is 16 miles. I have done no speed work, no tempo work, and in the last 3 weeks, have run less during the week than my long run. My nutrition has been absolute crap; darn you halloween candy! Oh, and have I mentioned that every time I step down with my left foot a sharp shooting pain runs up to my arse?? Yeah, this is gonna hurt.

Why am I doing this? Because my awesome little sister is running her first marathon and I want to be with her. She may kick my butt along the way, but I intend to stay with her for every step. I have not been a role model of good training in any way. But I am a game day player and I know that come race day, 26.2 miles will come out of my body come hell or high water.

This is not my preferred method of training. In my newbie and faster days, I followed a schedule complete with hills, track, tempo, and methodical long runs. Now, I’m at my slowest, my heaviest, my least fit, and I fully recognize that marathon training cannot be a crash course. I can’t all of a sudden up my mileage to 40 mile weeks and expect that I will show up healthy. Rather, I’m going to eek out one 20 and hope for the best.

Why do I put this all out to the cyber world? I suppose as a confessional that sometimes we don’t train for races but we do them anyway. Perhaps, this post will give someone else in my shoes comfort that their training is less than perfect and they are not alone? I’m not sure. Or maybe it is that amidst the exhortations on facebook of race and workout PR’s and high mileage etc.  that I wanted to be honest. This was not the best time for me to run a marathon, but I’m doing to do it anyway. And it’s gonna hurt and I embrace that with gusto. For another training session will come and with it, a chance to do it better next time.