The Long Run

After feeling some despondence the past couple of week that I can actually run this marathon, today's run has me feeling much more optimistic.

I did 17 miles today, and I had told myself if I made it through 17, I would feel like I could make it through the whole 26--even though that's 9 miles shy of the ultimate goal.

This is the loneliest race I've trained for. The long runs are long, and you're on your own. But more than that, what I've realized is that for this training, I can't think about anyone else. What my body can do running this far, and what someone else's body can do are incomparable, so worrying about anyone else is irrelevant. I have had to throw out my expectations of how my body works, and what it can do. The marathon is a different beast, and you get into strange and-- for me-- uncharted waters when you push past that halfway point.

Haruki Murakami wrote in his memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: "In long distance running, the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be."

That's more true for this distance than any other, I think.

As for the run today, it was long and grueling, but Seattle in Spring is a delight, and at various points cherry blossoms showered down from the trees and carpeted that paths.



I started out strong, with my knees aching some on the uphill, but I ordered myself not to think of anything below my waist, and instead to focus on my core, and my music, and the rest of my body. That trick worked well. I kept a solid 10 minute pace for the first 7 miles, and the dropped to 11:00 through mile 11. By the time I hit mile 13-15, my pace dropped to closer to a 14:00 pace--but I was also going uphill the whole time. I finished at a faster pace, but not too much.

I did four things over the past few days that helped with this run:

1) Worked on my core and stretched a lot
2) Had a good, large, carb-heavy meal the night before
3) Iced my knees last night
4) Took aspirin this morning before I ran

One thing I hadn't really thought about too much is the amount of calories I'm burning. My run-tracker estimates I burned over 2400 calories on this run. Of course I'm going to be burning a lot, but it hadn't really occurred to me just how much. I'm already a pretty indifferent eater, so I'm realizing I need to start paying more attention to making sure I'm getting enough calories.

Fortunately, sugar is apparently just fine for long runs, so I'm mostly planning to make up those extra calories with desert.