The Silver Lining

Earlier this year I trained for and ran my 3rd half marathon, and it went great. I cut more than 20 minutes off of my previous race time, coming in less than a minute behind my husband and feeling really happy with my performance. After that the plan all along was to continue on and train for my first full marathon. I really thought everything would go smoothly since I was already in the best shape of my life and running better than ever. But the 3+ months since finishing the half marathon have been plagued with injuries, illness, discouragement, and lack of motivation. I've gained about 12 lbs. in that time, and while I've managed to make it up to 20 miles on some of my runs, training has been sporadic and, to put it bluntly, rather pathetic. In fact, I've hardly run at all for about 3 weeks now, and the marathon (which, of course, I've already signed up for) is in less than a month away.

A few days ago someone suggested that maybe I should just bag the marathon since my training and preparation are going so poorly, so I've been pondering about where to go from here. I've really thought a lot about everything that's happened, and the conclusion I've come to is that all of the problems I've been having are a direct result of my inner fears relating to running a marathon. It's a distance I've never attempted before, and I think deep down part of me doesn't believe I can do it and/or doesn't believe it will be a good experience. Those fears have then manifested themselves as injury, illness, depression, junk food cravings, etc., anything to sabotage my training and give me an excuse to fail. So I can either let my fears win by dropping out, or I can continue forward and prove to myself that I CAN do this! I CAN do hard things! It's all about what I truly believe I'm capable of anyway, so if I can let go of those fears and doubts and really believe that I can do this, then I know I'll succeed.

As you might have guessed, I've decided to do the marathon still. But for this last month, there will be some changes, particularly with my eating habits. I am really going to clean up my diet by once again cutting treats and processed foods down to a minimum and sticking with whole foods. I'm actually excited to do an experiment with my nutrition to see how much progress I can make in one month after all of the damage I've done. While I have no illusions that I am going to come back and qualify for the Olympic trials as a result of eating well for one month, I am confident that this way of eating will help me have a wonderful experience come race day. I believe I will have more energy and motivation to train, I will be able to drop a lot of that recently-added weight, and I will be injury free by the end of this month! Add to that some emotional work to help me let go of the doubts and fears, and voila! Insta-marathoner! So let the game begin!