I want to share a couple of personal thoughts (perhaps random) about the upcoming Walt Disney World Marathon. Last year was my first full marathon run…for those of you that are wondering it is 26.2 miles! I knew it was a long run, but that is about all I knew…I had no full marathon experience as of yet.
Now I know what to expect. However, that doesn’t excuse me or anyone from the unknown…
Saturday January 8th will be a day to remember, it will be a day that Sarah experiences the unknown…she has been training to run the half marathon, which I must say she has done exceptionally well with her training. While she did a training run of 12 miles, a race is totally different! I am sure many of you reading this know exactly what I mean…the adrenalin, music, excitement, and camaraderie that you experience with 10,000-20,000 people all embarking on a journey of the unknown…because the truth is when your dealing with the miles and hours that go into the marathon distance races in a moment of time you can go from thriving in the known to surviving in the unknown. A quick roll of your ankle, a misstep, maybe you push a bit to hard at the start, or not hard enough…any of these things can cause your dreams to end in the blink of an eye.
These are the things that drive people crazy that have trained for months, or even years to run the race they have planned on running.
The plan for the marathon week is to pace Sarah for her half, to celebrate her journey, and embrace what comes next…
On Sunday things change, my race will begin. My bib number is 715, I do have a link that you can follow my splits at certain miles if you'd like it let me know...my goal is to run the fastest I possibly can for as long as I possibly can. My dream is to run a sub 3:10, my happy goal is anything under 3:30, yes that is a big difference, for clarification when the gun goes off I will be with the 3:10 pace group, but there are a lot of things in my head saying don’t do it, you can’t do it, you won’t do it…all doubt, but something deep within me says, yes you can.
The doubt comes from the accident I had in July that left me barely able to walk for a month and a half…but I ran everyday.
The fear, the doubt, it all sounds familiar to me, it is the same things I heard last New Years when I set a goal to run a 5k (3.1 miles) everyday for the entire year! This means that the shortest running day I had during the 2010 year was 3.1 miles. I am not sure when I will get a chance to blog again or if I even will before the marathon so I want to update my running totals for this year (minus three days as this is the 28th)
362 days of running in 2010:
Total Miles: 2,333
Daily Average: 6.44
Weekly Average 44.9
Monthly Average: 194
This year has been an amazing year…I don’t know what will happen on January 9th. I am unsure of what time I will run the marathon in, if I don’t beat 3:10 I have come to one conclusion, there is always a next time!
The greatest part of the marathon is not the time you receive at the finish (that is a bi-product or reward of your training) but it’s the journey to reach the end!
Good job Benji!
ReplyDelete