4 weeks and counting

4 weeks from today, I'm sure I will be sore as hell. It will be the day after my marathon, and judging by my long training runs, my body is going to be pretty pissed at me. I can't believe its a month away. When I decided in May to do a half-marathon, I don't know if I ever thought it would get here. No, that's not a misprint. I originally was going to do a 13.1 miler. However, my early training went so well, that I was up to 13 pretty quick. Knowing how my mind works with running, I needed to keep challenging myself so that I would continue training. At this point, I decided to try a full. I will say I severely overestimated how hard it would be to increase mileage after 13. I mean 13 came pretty quick, 26 has not been the same.

2 things I would like comment on this week. The first is that this past Tuesday, I did an 18 mile run. I actually felt really good (well, as good as you can running 18 miles). All along I've thought to myself that I could run the marathon, but in all honesty, this was truly the first time I thought "I AM going to do this." It was an awesome feeling. I'm done with the real long runs now. I will start tapering now and won't do anything over 10 from here on out. For the next 4 weeks I am also alcohol and junk food free. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right.

Secondly, I was up at App State for homecoming this past weekend (this also may be contributing why I feel the need to go alcohol free for a few weeks). Obviously I ran into lots of people I know, lots of "facebook friends." I post my weekly distance runs on twitter and facebook for accountability reasons. Something about me feeling that I have to post my run for the week makes me feel like I have to train. Well I was amazed at how many facebook friends actually read the stuff we post. Lots of people asked me how my training was going, and lots told me how awesome (or crazy) it was that I was going to do a marathon. I had no idea some of these people even read my posts. In a weird way, it really has motivated me. When I am running my marathon, and I start to drag (this will happen), I will find motivation to keep going not only because I don't want to let myself down, but in a weird way, because I don't want to let all the people who have been "training" with or through me along the way. I guess social networking is a more powerful tool than I realized. It was just awesome to know that something that started as motivation to me, has also managed to become inspirational to me. Thanks to all who have kept up to date with my training.