You guys! The Vermont City Marathon is May 26, which is two months from yesterday. Less thantwo months away. Eek! All of a sudden, it feels like it is coming on FAST and I am beyond nervous. It feels like there is a lot of training and a ton of progress to fit into a really short amount of time.
I would say I’m worried, anxious, panicked, AND stressed, but I’m thinking about trying to eliminate those words from my vocabulary in an effort to let the feelings pass me by. More on that another day. For now, I am ner-vous.
This race feels so uncertain.
It is hard to admit that for the first time since I signed up for my first race (the Rock N Roll San Diego Marathon), my training has started from square-one. It’s also hard to acknowledge that setting the same exact goal as I had for the NJ Marathon in 2011 is a little unreasonable. To run a 3:59 marathon, I have to maintain a 9:07 pace. It doesn’t sound so bad in such simple terms, but stretched out over 26.2 miles in my imagination it starts to get intimidating.
Truth? I just have no idea if 3:59 is going to be realistic. My long runs have felt like easy 9’s, but my short runs have too… and I’m having trouble getting those numbers to drop. The good news is that in the next two months I’m going to spend plenty of time doing tough training runs, up and down hills and then up again. Even better, I am signed up for a whole bunch of races in increasing mileage that will help me gauge my fitness and test my limits.
Plenty of people will tell me to relax and enjoy it… not to worry about the time… but isn’t that the point of a race?
I watched the Google chat that Runner’s World did with Kara Goucher last night and the talk reminded me of two really important lessons that my fabulous, fast, runner friend, Ro, originally taught me: Get uncomfortable and switch into your hardest gear. I think his direct quote was actually, “Know that, at some point, it is going to suck. Come to terms with it. Overcome it. And remember that it’s worth it.”
Before any of the above-mention off-limits words creep in, or I scale back my expectations, I need to incorporate these two realities into my workouts and then prepare to convert them on race day. May 26. In less than two months.