Miles and Miles
Day 73- Easy Run- 4.15 Miles / Day 74- Tempo Run- 12.06 Miles.
Day 75- Easy Run- 7 Miles/ Day 76- Easy Run- 5.10 Miles.
76 days in and over 480 miles logged. On Thursday after I finished my Tempo Run, I had run 60 miles in the previous 7 day period. All of these numbers float around but the most important one seems to be the passage of time. This started in July and somehow with a blink of an eye I am in mid-September. I am going to wake up and its going to be November. The perception of time as an adult is so dramatically different. The cliche that “youth is wasted on the young”. This concept of seasons and calendars flying by, which I become more aware every day I run and I feel the weather changing. As a kid it all felt interminable. Summer would never come and the school year felt like it lasted forever. Now I am hyper aware of seasons, weather and calendars, like any runner. I feel summer letting go and the crispness of fall setting in, hearing acorns drop and leaves slowly starting to change colors.
This may be the toughest and best part of the training but it may also be the most boring to the outside world. Now that my goal has crystallized it becomes sort of a myopic march to November. I’ll spice it up with some races but for the most part its about miles and numbers now. This week is particularly interesting because I have about 65 miles planned, which is more than what I typically do. I ran 11 miles on Tuesday and 12 miles on Thursday, before work. I never thought four years ago that I would be doing that. Tomorrow I will run the 18 mile race that New York Road Runners puts on. Its usually a pretty good indicator for how ready I am for the marathon. I have added to that pressure this year by doing forty five miles plus before I even get to the race.
For anyone that is in those initial stages of falling in love with running, I can say it only gets better. When I first started, people always wanted to discuss what I was doing. Asking me questions about my training and how many miles a marathon is. Now that I have been doing it a while and this will be my third New York City Marathon, no one cares as much. So the topic of conversation doesn’t come up as often. Most people who run don’t get the obsession. They think the marathon is a bucket list item, do it once and never go back. I did it once and realized I needed to make it a part of my life.
I get to run in the mornings and I get that quiet satisfaction of walking into the office after my runs and it being part of my secret identity. People know I run, but they don’t know the day to day details. Those are for me. They won’t know that I nailed my pacing during my eight mile tempo run on Thursday. They don’t know that yesterday, my legs felt like concrete after I drank some beers with a friend on Thursday night, but I pushed myself to finish the seven miles on my plan. I literally thought for a moment during the run to just do 6 miles and then I scolded myself that I had written 7 miles on my plan so I do 7 miles. There is an immense gratification that I get from checking that box each day. As if I am laying more concrete to my foundation.
The key to training is understanding the balance in life but also understanding that there are sacrifices that need to be made. And then the key to dealing with those sacrifices is knowing the reward that comes from it. I wish I would have known all of this when I was in my twenties. The twenty year olds I see running and diligent are so impressive to me. They figured it out so much quicker than I did (most of the time it is women who I meet who have figured it out). They understood that life isn’t just about the end goals but its about the everyday process. The biggest gift of running isn’t the races and the medals, but it is the incremental day to day satisfaction I get. So its not just about the ultimate goal of what I do in the marathon that drives me, its the satisfaction I get from each run I do every day.
