Wanderinggrizzly's Blog

Over Halfway February 15, 2010

As of yesterday I am seven weeks from the marathon.  Seven weeks!  That’s less than two  months, that’s only 5 more long runs so five weeks of high mileage and then the taper!

I am a little disappointed because I didn’t stick to the training as best as I should/could have.  Not sure if I’ll add marathon runner permanently to my resume.  You spend a lot of time running.  You may be going “well obviously” but I don’t think you can really comprehend how much time you can spend running until you start training for one of these things.  Especially if you’re a slow runner like I am.  It takes me around 3 hours to do 16 miles.  That’s 1/8 of my day, 1/8 of my day spent running, consider you spend approximately 8 hours working (1/3), 8 hours sleeping (1/3) 1/8 is a pretty big chunk!   These longer weeks I am running  34 miles, that’s approximately 374 minutes or over 6 hours of running per week.  I’m not sure I’ll make this a permanent part of my life.  I might aspire to run one a year or maybe even two…   We’ll see how I feel once I finish this thing. Depending on my experience at the VCM I was hoping to do the Missoula Marathon in July.  However it might be full by then and I don’t know if I want to do another one so soon…

For all these miles and minutes to be honest I expected more of a transformation, in my habits, body, and mentality.  While some growth has occured it’s not as drastic as I admit I had hoped for.  My weight is sort of yo-yoing from week to week.  My legs are bigger but harder and my boobs have almost disappeared.  I don’t think anyone who hasn’t seen me for a while will believe I am training for a marathon.  Granted it’s not nearly over yet, I have two more 16-mile runs and three 18-mile runs (I might trade one of those in for a 20 mile run just to see if I’ll ‘hit the wall’ and my other training program has a 20 mile run in it).  We’ll see how I feel once it’s all said and done.  I’m not saying I’m disappointed, I’m 100% positive I made this decision, but let’s face it, the marathon is a metaphor.  This is about changing my life, and while I think I’m made improvements, really I’ve just tweaked it a bit.

One thing is for sure, a marathon is a HUGE commitment, and I’m not even being hardcore about it.  After the marathon I think I’ll take a break from running.  I’m sure I still will, I just won’t be training.  That will give me a little over a month to focus on riding and roping before I head out West again.  I appreciate the insight running has given me into my life so far, but I will definitely need both a physical and mental break from it.