Marathon Motivations and an Update

I remembered the other day that I announced my insane plan to run the Chicago Marathon, then let it fall off the radar in terms of this blog. Since I do get asked a bunch, “How’s the marathon training going?” I thought I’d answer.

First some perspective. I’ve never been athletic. Sure, I participated in some sports pretty much up to freshman year in high school (soccer and wrestling), but I was far from the star athlete. On the contrary, I was the one who fell prey to the cruelness that is youth, being called “fatso” and other colorful names. In college I treated my body like a temple in so much as the money-changers did back in the bible before Jesus kicked them out.  That is to say, health and fitness were not good friends of mine.

A few years back started to get serious about my health and fitness.  We joined a health club after we moved to Brookfield and I started working out on a regular basis. In 2005 I participated in the Hustle Up the Hancock stair climb and quite surprisingly didn’t collapse. As a mater of fact, I actually had a lot of fun. Quite a few people in their congratulations joked, “What’s next?  A marathon?”

At first I dismissed it as folly.  Me? A marathon? That is a good one.  But in my training for the stair climb, I did a lot of running (albeit on a treadmill) and found I actually liked it more than most of the another cardio options at the club. I decided to enter the Crazylegs Classic 8k run in 2006 and ran the five miles in around 55mins.  During the race I remember thinking, “Could I do this for another 21 miles?” and the answer was, “maybe.”

The big challenge was the time.  Beyond the physical commitment, training for a marathon takes a lot of time. The long runs on the weekend take several hours to complete, and there there is the commitment to all the mid week running. Most programs are at a minimum 16 weeks. My wife was pregnant with our second kid and there was no way I could commit the time last year.  After much discussion last December I decided 2007 would be the year. While she still thinks I’m crazy, she was willing to make the commitment with me so I could get all my training in.

So how has it been?  In a word, tough.  I’ve only been running for maybe 5 years (running in the sense of jogging/fitness running - I’m not counting trying to sprint between gates to make a connecting flight at the airport) and up until this year I’d run almost exclusively on a treadmill.  At the advice of former co-worker and friend, Adam Hecktman, I decided to follow the training regimen in Jeff Galloway’s book, Marathon: You Can Do It! I started the program back in April with a weekend “long” run of 3 miles.  I moved to running on the road and have grown to love it.  Along the way, I’ve totally fallen in love with running, which must sound weird.  Why would you attempt a marathon unless you liked running?  The marathon was to prove to myself that I could do it; I’m not that slow fat kid anymore. I wanted to get in shape and a big audacious goal like running a marathon was a good motivator.  I still need to complete it, but I know I’ve found a past time that I’ll be enjoying for quite a while into the future.

Around early July, I completed a 16 mile training run.  Afterwards, I felt a little funny, but after massive amounts of hydration and food (it is crazy just how hungry running for three hours makes you) I felt better.  Then on Tuesday for my midweek run, I got a searing pain in my left buttock.  I gave it a few strides, but it only got worse, so I knew I needed to give it a rest.  Then the fear set in.  Is this the end?  I know that most training schedules are pretty strict in that you can’t take a ton of time off from them.  After a week and a half’s rest, I gave it another go, and ran 12 miles with no issues.  Phew!  So far that had been the only snag.

Fast forward to this past weekend - I ran 20 miles this past Saturday and didn’t die.  I felt like I was going to probably around mile 18 or so, but pushed through it. I kept something I read in the back of my head which I’d paraphrase as, “If a long run isn’t that hard, especially the first time you attempt that mileage, then its not doing you much good.”  If got two more really long runs left before the big one (and its crazy to look at this week’s 8 mile run as “easy”).  I know they’re going to be hard, but so far its been worth the pain.