February 21, 2010

8 days to official training….

This week, Pete and I celebrated a seventy-minute run. Both of us came home cheerful from a run (at a comfy pace) that lasted over an hour, happy and a bit tired from our "long run". It is hard to believe in just 19 weeks our bodies will be ready for 26.2 miles, but that is the plan. I know it works. I’ve done it two times. Follow the schedule, suffer through the long runs, and endurance is the result.

I don’t know how I let Pete talk me into this (or how I talked myself into it, really). I had no plans to run another marathon…ever! (Well, unless I got a lot faster and a 20 miler was only a two-hour investment, instead of a four-hour nightmare). He felt he just HAD to do one, and I recommended Missoula. It is just a three hour drive, he would have a lot of family and friends to cheer for him, and in some ways Missoula still feels a bit like home. A long time ago, Pete mentioned we should run it together to celebrate our ten-year anniversary. Our anniversary is the day before the July 11^th marathon, but I kind of brushed off the idea. I didn’t want to do it. I’d suffered quite acutely during my first marathon (bonking due to stupidity at mile 17, and doing a "walk/sit the curb" for nearly 10 miles). The second marathon was actually fun in comparison, but I paid for it. I felt great until about mile 24 when I developed a mysterious ache in my knee. I finished out the race, but the vague knee pain turned out to be (or turned into) the dreaded IT Band Syndrome. I suffered with it for a full year, only able to run slow and short, and even now, almost two years later (and every attempt to beat it), that leg is just not the same. Honestly, the more determination Pete showed to run the full, the more I hoped he would change his mind. I know myself what a huge time and emotional investment it is, and I guess I was thinking a tad selfishly.

Last fall we trained for the Vegas half together. The training was very hard, and it burnt me out completely. By the end of the 10 weeks with Ryan Hall’s training program (basically a variation on the famous Run Less, Run Faster, in which every run’s goal includes an ambitious pace), I was dreading every run. After the race, I decided to run only outside, with no real time or distance goals…just vague ideas about how long I wanted to be out there. The results were so amazing; they got me into this mess. I fell in love with running all over again. I ditched any schedule, and kept a journal only for shoe replacement purposes. I skipped the treadmill, did not worry about my pace, or run any hills. Basically I ran just what I wanted and when I wanted, for a couple of months. I LOVED it. So, how did I end up deciding to run the marathon with Pete? Keep in mind, it was during this lovely and euphoric, falling in love with running all over again phase… I’m out on a sunny day at the end of January, listening to Vampire Weekend Contra for the first time and I think to myself, this is so great – I love running, I’ve got to run that marathon with Pete. I want to do the long runs together, and I want to cross that finish line together. I want to share all of the pleasure and pain of training for, and running, a marathon, with my husband. All of sudden, running another marathon sounded….kind of….fun!