By the time you're reading this I'll probably be packed into a car full of marathon gear with one other crazy runner headed to D.C. for the Marine Corps Marathon. It's hard to believe that a little over a year ago I was beginning to train for my first half marathon, and now here I am crazy enough to do the full 26.2 miles.
These past 5 months of training have certainly been a whirlwind. There have been good runs and bad runs, HOT runs (gotta love training in the summer!), and rainy runs, runs by myself and runs with people that I otherwise never would have met before. And although this training has sucked up my social life, I've been able to gain an incredible running partner and now friend! Kind of awesome what running does.
Throughout this process I've had many people ask me why I want to run all 26.2 miles of a marathon. And honestly, sometimes I find myself asking the same question. What was I thinking signing up for this thing?! But now, when it's all said and done (well, almost) I think this training period was just what I needed at this time in my life. A few months ago, at the end of August, I left my internship that I'd had for 2 years. I was a recent college graduate and there were no full time positions at the time, so it was time to move on. (Spoiler alert: after a little over a month of unemployment I got hired back at the same company, just in a different division. I start November 1st. Woop woop!) I was kind of excited about this unemployment period. There were a lot of things on my "to do" list that I wanted to get done, and what better time to do them than now? Turns out, this unemployment came at a perfect time during training too. Just as runs were getting longer and more intense, I found that I had more time for running and recovering (read: naps everyday).
During this time of unemployment, I think that without running I would have gone crazy. I've been in that "what am I doing with my life?" period and I've had quite a few stressed out moments trying to figure out what exactly it is that I want to do. This time could have been a time when all I did was lay around the house, depressed and confused and sulky. But instead, I think that this marathon gave me something to focus on and really put a lot of my time and effort into, when I didn't have much else during the day. It's been an incredible goal and just training for one and running up to 20 miles has been a HUGE accomplishment. So, when people ask me what I've been doing with myself during this unemployment, I can proudly say that I've been training for a marathon. Having this to put basically all of my time and energy into has been wonderful. I believe that this unemployment and this training were perfectly timed and now I can see why this unemployment happened when it did, and that it was meant to be all along. It's kind of God's wonderful way of saying, I believe in you, you can do this...now here's your chance to focus on this goal and accomplish this dream. And then, 4 days after the race I'll start my new job and a new chapter in life! Pretty wonderful how things work out.
So the hard part of training in the dead of Summer is over...now it's time to run my little heart out in 3 days with 30,000 other crazies in D.C.. I can't wait to (God willingly) accomplish this big goal in my life and call myself a marathoner. :)
And then...REST!!!
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