For the past two or so months of my life, I’ve been training for a race I wasn’t sure I could finish. I haven’t admitted this to anyone — out of fear of being portrayed as a wimp or a genuine belief that if I say it, it will come true — but it took until the halfway point of my 19-week training plan to believe in pulling this thing off. Today, I had my first realization that the Eugene Marathon is actually a plausible goal.
To be candid, this training block has been way harder than I had imagined. The miles aren’t getting easier, the weather isn’t getting better and I’m busier than I’ve ever been in my life. The only thing keeping me going is that I genuinely have fallen in love with running. With winter term seasonal depression running rampant in my brain, my runs are just about the only time of the week I feel joy. And even knowing it will make me feel better, it can be so hard to get out the door to run when the forecast is nonstop rain and gray for the whole week.
This morning, the only emotion I could muster toward my long run was dread. I journal with my coffee and breakfast each day, and today’s entry was an echo of the last two weeks — a few sentences establishing my misery, and then about two pages trying to encourage myself to keep going. The incentive is always the same: in a few weeks it will be spring break, and then spring term will bring more daylight and sunshine and you can run outside without getting soaking wet and freezing cold. But no matter how many times I write it down, the time doesn’t seem to pass, and it feels like I’m ages away from that brighter future.
I say this now as rain incessantly thrums on my skylight, a once peaceful sound I have begun to detest. At 5 p.m. it’s just as dark as it was at noon when I set off for my run. As I mustered the will to go out into the drear this morning, I stood with my face lifted to my overhead light, pretending the warm orange hue of my eyelids was from the sun, not a fluorescent bulb. As I started jogging, I was grumbling that people shouldn’t call Eugene “Tracktown USA” because it has the world’s worst weather for running. Three miles later, I was head bopping to The Bee Gees and grinning. This is why I need running — the feel-good endorphins are the most powerful drug in the world.
Around mile seven, my runner’s high had dulled to a peaceful slog. At mile 10, I was in pain again, of the physical rather than mental variety. Throughout all of my training, one thing has remained true: at 10 miles, shit hits the fan. My hamstrings begin to cramp, my footsteps fall heavier and it feels as if I’m going slower, even when I’m not. Of course, getting injured and taking two weeks off of running didn’t help, but I had expected that by now, the longer distances would hurt less. WRONG. When you’re in excruciating pain 10 miles into a run, it’s hard to imagine running 16 more. So no, I didn’t believe I could finish this marathon.
My training program was designed so that I build miles slowly and don’t overdo it. When I started this training block, the farthest I had run was 13.1 miles, so I figured the real work didn’t start until week seven of training when I would run my first 14 miler. But during week seven, I got injured. I was already frustrated by how much progress I had lost speed-wise from when I ran my half-marathon, and getting injured would surely only slow the progress more. I’ve never been more pleased about being wrong.
Since my two weeks off for rehab, my average pace has decreased by nearly 30 seconds. Maybe I needed the rest, maybe I just needed time, but by some stroke of luck, after a seven-week plateau, I’m beginning to improve. Today, I set out on my run intending to only go 13 miles, but I overshot my route and hit mile 13 two miles from the car. I sure as hell wasn’t walking two miles soaked to the bone and shivering, so I decided today would be the day I got over my half-marathon hump.
Until now, anything longer than 13.1 miles has felt extremely daunting, and 13.1 is only half of 26.2. So up until today, I didn’t believe 26.2 would ever happen. But then I remembered that the difference between 13.1 and more than 13.1 is just one step. So, I took that step, and then another, and by placing one foot in front of the other, I ran 15 miles.
In those last two miles, I made a miraculous discovery. At mile 13.5, my hamstring pain began to dull and I hit a second wave of runners high that I believe could have propelled me another three miles had I so wished. I’ve spent the past two months fearing anything over a half marathon because of the pain, but little did I know, the respite from the pain was just around the corner.
