Doubt

I had an interesting email exchange with a friend yesterday where she expressed doubt in her ability to train properly for an upcoming event.  My advice to her was to “go for it” but then I started thinking about how much I doubted my own running abilities going in to Saturday’s marathon.   I started to feel a bit like a hypocrite.  It is easy to tell someone else that their doubts are unfounded but something else entirely when you have to deal with your own.

My training did not go as well as planned.  I wasn’t able to get in as much mileage as I wanted because of life, my own training mistakes and sickness.  I scrapped all the of speedwork in the last 6 weeks of training because it wasn’t working for me – not hitting the pace I thought I should be hitting was taking too much of a toll on my confidence so I chose to keep running rather than keep quitting when things didn’t go the way I wanted them to go.  I don’t feel like I am ready to run a marathon.

Is it smart for me to back off my marathon goals for the reasons listed above or am I just making excuses so I don’t have to try and fail? 

I don’t know. 

I’ve talked myself in to being open to the possibility of just running for “fun” on Saturday without concern for a time goal but what if I am missing out on an opportunity to really test myself?  I ran lots of long miles.  I even ran a 22 miler in an even, faster than normal long run, pace and felt great the rest of the day.  I did do 6 weeks of speedwork in the beginning of this training cycle and ran a 10K PR as a result.  Perhaps feeling “ready” for a marathon is overrated?  I certainly have felt “ready” for any of my past marathons.

The best I can do is show up and give it my best for the day and maybe, resigning myself to “running for fun” is really giving it my best? 

David Fleming, a writer at ESPN wrote an article about his experience with his first (and last) marathon.  The following words stuck with me:

“The reason we all hate -- and love -- running so much is that it's very much like life itself: It changes drastically and frequently and often without warning.

And you never know, from one day to the next, if you're going to have a great run or a horrible one -- you just have to start running and take it from there.”

Charleston Marathon Start Line:  Here I Come.

Daily Dozen:
3 miles, nice and slow this morning