No Rest for the Weary

November12^th, 2010:  I was very encouraged when I woke up Monday morning and didn’t feel too bad.  Still tired and a bit stiff, but nothing awful and so I had passed the real litmus test for continuing the adventure.  During the initial recruiting effort for a sidekick (don’t want to attempt Le Grand Raid without a trusted companion by my side) I started asking acquaintances who were runners about the distances they had conquered.  The hope was to get an inkling of interest in accompanying me on Le Grand Raid, but thus far every attempt has petered out.

One example is when I posed my leading question to an associate at work, a young guy who is very athletic, he replied that he had run a half marathon once and was completely done with anything up to that length. “I hurt and couldn’t walk for a week afterwards” was his discouraging response.

This made me recall my doctor’s statement when he proposed the half marathon / full marathon staging.  I think it was something like “let’s see how you do with running a marathon first”.  All of these forewarnings had me suspicious there were serious repercussions after the race had been run, where I was thinking all the suffering would be incurred beforehand as you pushed yourself during the race.

I don’t discount these warnings.  However, with the half marathon under my belt I am of a mind that the post-race trauma results from pushing yourself super hard in the big event.  Don’t get me wrong – I ran pretty hard while I was training, but I never tried to hit an eight minute pace for anything over six miles…nine minutes was always the target for longer tracks.  Had I attempted to shave ten minutes off of my half marathon time I could possibly be done right now?

More lessons along this road to Le Grand Raid.  The sobering factor is that I had plotted the recovery plan suggested by my training book for the three weeks after the race and was looking forward to some kinder, gentler runs.  But I made the mistake of checking out the next hurdle, the full marathon, and it is slated for March 20^th.  Consulting my training book, there was a twenty week program for running a full marathon and wouldn’t you know that date is exactly twenty weeks away…

So Tuesday I took up the gauntlet for full marathon training.  Successfully conquering the half marathon leads me to a clear goal for the next challenge: I want to complete the marathon in four hours.   Such a goal would have been inconceivable just a few months back, but I witnessed how my conditioning improved across the first regimen, so I’m going to prime the pump with an ambitious goal.

It felt good to hit the road on Tuesday and I ran better than suspected, despite being a bit tender after Sunday’s half marathon.  The confidence boost received from completing the half marathon makes me feel like a “runner” now, lol. There was resilience in my strides that were the product of realizing I could motivate this old body to move.  Hopefully that will persist as the training requirements ramp up!