One of the things about the marathon training program is that the mileage really piles up fairly quickly. Last week I wrote about how I had run the farthest I’d ever gone in my running career. Today I had to repeat that, plus another 3 kilometres on top. I was mentally ready. Judging from how my body reacted to last week’s run, I decided to keep my pace this morning slow, but consistent. After about the 7 kilometre mark I started running alone. At that point, everyone was either or had broken off the route. I was left to my thoughts. Perhaps I was a little bit afraid that my head would be full of noise. There are a lot of people that claim that they are unable to run without music or anything to keep themselves from focusing on the run. I was afraid that without music I’d be apt to converse with myself and produce incessant chatter. Interestingly, that wasn’t the case. I can’t even say that I was fully focused on my actions either. If I’m being honest, for a lot of it my mind was relatively blank. My body just carried me forward without me having to worry much if things were aching or not.
On occasion I checked my watch to check that I was being consistent and not slowing down or speeding up. Every now and then I’d take a sip from my backpack, then tighten the straps to make sure the backpack was snug. I didn’t worry about trying to catch up with anyone. I didn’t worry about how far along I’d gone, or how much distance was left. I was aware of where I was on the route, but the distance didn’t matter. I think that was one of the biggest things about this run. It didn’t feel like how far I’d gone, or how much distance remained should have dictated how I ran. Does that make sense? Since I was consistent in terms of pace, I didn’t bother speeding up just to catch up, or slowing down to give myself a bit of a break. My goal was to make sure I didn’t feel any worse at the end of the run than I did at the beginning. In that sense, I felt successful.
By the end, I wasn’t really sweating heavily. I wasn’t hurting. I wasn’t out of breath. I would say that I felt at peace, but that’s not entirely true. I was ecstatic. I finished the run feeling very positive, and the fact that this was a 26K run made things even better. I probably could have carried the run a little bit farther if I needed to. That’s how great I was feeling. I’m sure that this won’t be the case all the time; everyone has good and bad runs. All the same, I’m glad I had this experience because it’s almost as if I had finally tapped into my running zen. Nothing else mattered in those moments. No pain, no discomfort, no distance, no heat. All that mattered at that very moment was the very act of running itself.
My training only carries me to 32K of a 42.2K racing distance. I think I’m finally beginning to see how I’m going to be able to make it through the final ten.
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