Can too!

I don't know why no one believes me that I can do this marathon. Yeah, right, I know, I haven't done a run longer than 12 miles since... um, let's see, my last marathon in March, but that doesn't mean anything. But everyone still thinks I'm "crazy" (rocketpants), nuts, round the bend, insane, bonkers, mad, whacko... Angry Runner has me languishing in an ICU with ruptured legs. Renee, the feminist runner has me puking and soiling myself the entire length of the course (and maybe on the drive home too). Bob Almighty has made an educated guess that I just plain can't do it and my legs are going to fall off below the knee at mile 23. And 100 mile Rusty just wants photos of the carnage.

Oh ye of little faith! What ever happened to "I can't do that, sign me up!"? In fact I've gotten such a negative response to my last post (Angry and Renee have even come back to beg me to re-think this) that now I feel I have to do it, just to prove that I can. What's been one of the mottos of this blog, "If you're going to talk the talk, you'd better walk the walk" (or run as it may be)?! Of course it's going to hurt. Marathons always hurt. Suffering is kind of the point, though (left - look how much my life sucked in the last .2 miles of my last one). See, for me there are two kinds of challenges: the kind where you train, bust your hump and work your booty off for several months, and go out there gnashing your teeth to beat your competitors to a bloody pulp. The alternative is to go out there and beat your own limitations to a bloody pulp. Personally, I find it much more gratifying to be competing against no one but your own expectations.

You only get one first marathon: one time that you get to nervously wonder if you can go the distance, and only one enormous swell of pride when you first realize that you put in all that hard work and YOU DID IT! Congratulations to Renee and Michelle who just smashed this important milestone last weekend. But then what do you do? Go for a PR, try to place better than you ever have before? Try to qualify for Boston? And more congratulations are due to Mr. Satan A. Chillies who not only managed to finish the steamy Chicago Marathon last week, but in a blazing 3:30! Amazing! This isn't my first marathon, it'd be my third and like hell I'm going as fast as I can for 26.2 miles! So where does the new challenge come from? If you aren't looking to go further or faster than ever before, where do you get room to test yourself and find something to be proud of? Twenty-six point two miles is a helluva long way to go to not feel like it's something special. Anything above 10k deserves bragging rights.

So how do I make myself proud? I take something that's someone else's big deal, and I do it on the spur of the moment. This is not to take away from anyone else's big marathon achievements in recent weeks, it's a way to draw upon that enthusiasm and be able to feel the doubt and subsequent exhilaration of finishing again and again. Think of it this way: you're at mile 24 in your first marathon and you find yourself running with a stranger. "This is my first marathon, and I'm going to make it!" you gush to the stranger next to you. Now would you rather have some snooty person next to you saying, "This is my 15th, but I did Chicago/Boston/the Olympics last weekend so I'm just taking it easy today" or someone who says, "I've done one before, but I just wanted to see if I could do it again! Come on, we're going to make it!" A marathon should be a challenge to everybody.

This is not the first crazy-long thing I've done untrained either. I climbed a mountain in Andorra after only one long bike ride in months. I hiked 52 miles on absolutely, positively nothing but my base triathlon fitness. I biked a century all by myself because I hadn't even ridden my bike in a month. I told myself when I started training for distance events that I wanted to be fit enough to be able to sign up for any event (within reason) that I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. I want to be able to see a century or a marathon in the paper and say, "Hey, I'm going to go ahead and do that!" And if I decide one day that I want to do an Ironman, or a 7-day stage ride I want to have the fitness to jump right into the training when it's time. What's the point of having the fitness if you're constantly waiting through a 12-week buildup to use it? When I feel like I need an ego boost, why should I have to wait for an A race to come around?

When people run ultra events, how do they train? Do ultra marathoners run 100 miles a day for a couple of weekends before their taper? Do elite ironmen go out and do an ironman-distance workout once a month before Kona? Was Lance Armstrong simulating the Tour de France once a month for 6 months before the tour every year? HELL no. Know why? Because these kinds of events tear the body up too much, you can only do these things once (maybe twice if you're lucky/crazy) a year. If you try to do these things too often you'll get sub-optimal results at best. The way to train for ultra-endurance events is 50% fitness, and 50% a willingness to grit your teeth and suffer. Then you get to relax. For us mortals, a marathon is the same principle. Very few marathoners actually run 26 miles in their buildup. The idea being that your training is not to cover the distance, but for your body to be able to deal with the strain and load of several hours of strenuous exercise. Although I haven't done a marathon buildup per se, and the pounding is sure to do a number on my legs, my body is used to having 4-6 hours of exercise thrown at it at a time. I'm confident that this will hurt less than my first marathon.

I have my own personal reasons for wanting to do this marathon. In short, I need to prove to myself that I am still strong, and that I do still have the drive to push myself beyond my limits. The reasons why I'm doubting that aren't relevant. But as far as finishing, I know I can. I haven't been sore for more than 2 days after anything I've done in the past 2 years (except maybe lifting weights). Don't you worry about me. As long as the weather's nice and they don't wrestle me off the course (I'll be running as a bandit since I won't be able to raise $80 by Monday), I'll survive. And I'll write a fabulous race report to rub it in the faces of all those who didn't believe in me, and if I can, photos for Rusty. (Do I have to be IN the photos? Sometimes event photos can be pretty ugly - see below).