Marathon Redemption - Weeks 14, 15, 16

PARANOIA is in bloom,
the PR transmissions will resume.
They'll push drugs that keep us all dumbed down,
and hope we never see the truth around.
So come on.
Another promise, another scene,
another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed.
And all the green belts wrapped around our minds,
and endless red tape to keep the truth confined.
So come on.

They will not force us.
They will stop degrading us.
They will not control us.
We will be VICTORIOUS.

Interchanging mind control.
Come let the revolution take its toll.
If you could flick a switch and open your third eye,
you'd see that we should never be afraid to die.
So come on.
Rise up and take the power back,
it's time the fat cats had a heart attack.
You know their time's coming to an end,
we have to unify and watch our flag ascend.
So come on.

Muse, "Uprising"
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With the big "M" less than three days away now, the paranoia is definitely in bloom in Running Lawyer world. Actually, it has been for the last couple of weeks now. It's safe to say that the past two weeks of taper has made me a total head case, so much so that it's amazing I've managed to get anything accomplished at work or otherwise. My mental state in the taper has gone downhill faster than Bode Miller in the Super G.

I don't remember being quite so nutty this time a year ago, but maybe this is the weight of 14 weeks of hard training and anticipation on my shoulders. I've never had a training session go so well. So well, in fact, that I thought many times it was going a little too well and kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well, the proverbial shoe dropped two weeks ago today during my last really tough interval session. Some of you know what happened, some of you don't, but to borrow another blogger's comment about marathon training - the first rule of fight club, is you don't talk about fight club. And I don't really want to talk about fight club. My IT band felt tweaky. I've taken the last two weeks nearly off running, have iced, stretched, massage, and foam rolled to my heart's content. My IT band is now fine, I deem it so. End of story.

Or at least, that's how I wish it was. Reality is, it's not so easy to push aside the feelings of doubt and insecurity. I think I know what I'm capable of doing if I push myself, but then I'm also exceedingly good at convincing myself that I'm just never going to be that good at anything and settling for the easy way out. I think too much. I'm the line in the Billy Joel song -- "Should I try to be a straight A student? If you are then you think too much." I can think myself right out of anything, including a new PR this weekend. I can think of a million reasons why I can't run as fast as I want to run this weekend.

But I can also think of a lot of reasons why it just really doesn't matter how fast I run. Okay, okay...it would be ridiculous to say that it doesn't matter to me at all. But in the last couple of weeks I've seen close friends have to deal with incredible losses in their lives. Pain fair greater than a finicky IT band. Aches and pains, torn up muscles, messed up tendons, fractured bones - all of those things heal over time. Some pains don't ever heal. The pain my friends are suffering can't be made better with an ice pack and a few sessions with the PT. I'm so, so fortunate that the only pains I've felt in the last several months of training have been the kind that will go away.

What will be on Sunday will be...what I'm going to enjoy most about this weekend is just that I have the chance to go run and that I can share that experience with the people I love most in life - my husband, my family, and the very best friends a girl could ever have.

Therefore, surrounded as we are by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us fling aside every encumbrance and the sin that so readily entangles our feet. And let us run with patient endurance the race that lays before us.
Hebrews 12:1