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Celebrating the Process Over the End

 Before the Halloween Birthday Bash weekend, I had said that I would never run another marathon UNLESS I actually completed a full training plan before then. 

And now, after the weekend, I’ve run another one (that’s a total of 5 now). And I’m pretty proud to say that this was my first marathon with a full training plan completed before hand(:

It was a 16-week plan that Ethan just kind of threw at me, and we did it together. We had Wednesdays and Sundays off, with consecutively longer and longer long runs on Saturdays, and quite a bit of mileage each week throughout. Honestly I don’t know if I’ve ever run that many weeks of 40+ miles in my entire life. 

The result was kind of interesting, because you would think that with all that preparation that I would end up running my fastest ever marathon. But still, my fastest remains the Salt Lake City marathon at 4:36 (and some odd seconds, I don’t remember the time). This one in contrast was an entire 45 minutes slower, at around 5:12, and was actually one of the slowest marathons to date. 

Honestly though, I can’t complain. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been more of a process person than a final performance/conclusion person. Even in music, I always felt like the best part of it wasn’t the concerts or recitals or whatever, but it was actually the dedication needed to keep practicing two or three hours a day for the months leading up to those performances, that was the real fun part. The performance is when you have to deal with nerves, and making sure you’re in the right headspace to do your best, and every little thing can go wrong and really mess you up. But all the playing you get to do before that is probably when you actually play your best - without the pressure of an audience, but you’ve got the muscle memory to make really great music. 

And surprise surprise, this felt very similar too(: Two weeks before the marathon, we had a 15 miler, which would and DID terrify me at the beginning of the training plan. In fact I remember feeling defeated in one of those first long runs at around 10 miles, and run-walking it to the finish. At the end of that plan though, when I’d been running speed workouts that were 8 or 9 miles at a time, with easy 7 and 8 milers in subsequent days, 15 now felt nice and relaxed. I already knew what to expect, I had fueled correctly before so no random bathroom breaks in corn fields were necessary (and they happened in those earlier long runs), and I just got to run and enjoy feeling strong and prepared. 


That’s not to say that the marathon wasn’t a little nerve wracking or stressful, but the nice thing about doing all the training runs beforehand is that, once we lined up to start, it felt like just another part of the process. It didn’t feel quite like such a momentous occasion, cause it was JUST a little bit more than other runs I’d done in previous weeks. And so even though it was slower than I wanted, it still felt good, and it’s motivating for me to keep working on it. 

I think it’s important to enjoy the process - it makes it more fun throughout, and it doesn’t put so much pressure on the final result. Plus, it’s motivating for you to keep going, and not have to do a complete restart after you’ve blown yourself out. 

So on to the next training block. We’ll see what we decide to do(:

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