Marathon Redemption - Week 13

Something has changed within me,
something is not the same.
I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game.

Too late for second guessing,
too late to go back to sleep.
It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes - and leap.

It's time to try defying gravity.
I think I'll try defying gravity. And you can't pull me down!

I'm through accepting limits,
'cause someone says they're so.
Some things I cannot change, but 'til I try I'll never know.
Too long I've been afraid of
losing love, I guess I've lost.
Well if that's love, it comes at much too high a cost.

I'd sooner buy defying gravity.
Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity. And you can't pull me down!

So if you care to find me,
look to the Western sky!
As somone told me lately, everyone deserves a chance to fly!
And if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free.
To those who'll ground me, take a message back from me --

Tell them how I'm defying gravity!
I'm flying high defying gravity!
And soon I'll match them in reknown.

And nobody in all of Oz,
no wizard that there is or was,
is ever gonna bring me down!

Wicked - The Musical, "Defying Gravity"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Defying Gravity" has quickly become one of my favorite songs since I was lucky enough to see Wicked last fall, and it is absolutely perfect for this point in training for me. Not only do I feel like I"m in the best physical shape of my life after the last few months, I feel that mentally I've become an entirely new runner. Even with the ups and downs of training, I have more confidence in myself than I've ever felt before, and I just hope I can carry that through the next few weeks into the race.

This was the last training week before my taper starts, and Fair Weather Runner and I had planned a 22 mile run as our last training run. Even though last week's post was all about conquering the inner demons and ignoring bad training runs, I'm not going to lie - having that 22 mile run go well was going to be a big deal for me. I even found myself, like she did, getting nervous and having trouble sleeping the night before. Partly because I was afraid I was going to oversleep my 5:45 am alarm, but partly because I was nervous that the weather was going to be cold and windy and terrible and that this was going to be yet another difficult long run that did nothing for my confidence.

When we started out in the morning it was still dark and pretty chilly - about 37 degrees. I don't think either one of us was really awake yet, either, becuase we sort of shuffled along and grumbled a lot for the first 4 miles. Once the sun came up the weather started to warm up a bit, and so did our running. Based on those first few miles I was really thinking the entire run was going to be HARD. But gradually we eased into a rhythm and the miles got a little easier and the time started to pass by a little faster. We'd talked about getting to mile 20 and just seeing how we felt before deciding to go ahead with the last two miles...so it was a huge relief to get back to my house around mile 19.50 for some gatorade and a Gu and realize that we only had 2.5 miles left to run. And that we both still felt like we could easily keep running. As it turns out, the running was less of a problem than attempting to do the math on how far we needed to go before we turned around after having already run for 3+ hours -- yes, we both have post-graduate degrees, but those sure don't seem to help much after 19 miles on your feet.

At any rate, even with a steady 15mph and whatever hills we could find thrown in, we finished the run and I was extremely proud of both of us. I know we both felt like we could go ahead and run those last 4.2 miles if we needed to. And I think we both made it through the run without feeling too torn-up, which is another huge accomplishment. I'm not sure the 22 miles would haev gone nearly as well without the Fair Weather Runner - in fact, I'm pretty sure the last 2 miles would have been more or less walked if she hadn't been with me. But for our 22 miler to go so well is a huge confidence boost heading into the taper.

And even though last week I said I wasn't going to talk about my training runs much anymore, I was pretty stinking proud that I ran a 5 mile tempo run last week with my three tempo miles at an 8:34 pace - some 30 seconds less than what my training plan called for. Take that, inner demons!

It's extremely gratifying but also a little scary that most of the hard work on this training plan is out of the way at this point. I still have some 4x1600 repeats to look foward to this week that will be very challenging, but most of the grunt work has been done. All that's left is to sit back and relax and enjoy the fruits of my labor - the problem is, I'm not the type that's very good at sitting and relaxing. Although I'm looking forward to the taper because I KNOW my legs need a rest at this point, I'm probably going to get a little stir-crazy. A lot stir-crazy, actually. But luckily I've got enough things in my life right now that I love doing that will keep me busy and make the next 19 days until the marathon fly right by.