Week 4

I have successfully completed 4 weeks of marathon training. This was the worst by far. Not in physical training, but mentally. I did all my workouts, but had two days I seriously contemplated quitting. Wednesday I did a trail ride with Steve. Fifteen miles, two hours of chasing him up and down hill, over rocks, through sand and sweating like crazy. I actually was able to ride through the sand for half a mile where it undulates, for the first time ever. Major victory for me. On the way home though, I just didn't want to do it. Unfortunately, had no choice. Thursday night I ran to Nate's baseball game, 5.5 miles. I had a six block stretch where it took everything I had to keep going forward. I literally wanted to sit down on the trail and not move. I gave myself a pep talk, something along the lines of "you want to run a marathon, that is going to be hard. If you can't power through the last 1.5 miles of a 5.5 mile run, you can't do 26.2." I finished, and I thought along the way that I can't take anymore failure in my life right now. Not any that I can control, anyway, and this is within my power to finish. THEN I got to the game and one of Nate's teammates stopped my on the way by the dugout and called me a runner. ME! A RUNNER! He said he told my son a couple weeks ago that he thought it was cool that his mom could outrun him. Then my 19 year old nephew (college athlete) commented that I didn't appear to even be tired. Appearances are deceiving. Anyway, the positive comments helped. Getting told I was crazy on Saturday by an adult friend from church was also taken in a positive light. See, I had just ran 12.5 miles successfully. First time I ever ran that far by myself without a friend or husband for moral support. 2 miles from church, my finish line, I actually got pretty emotional (tears, but with all the sweat no one would know) because I had thought about quitting earlier in the week, and if I had, I would have missed that feeling of accomplishment, that feeling that I CAN, in spite of my weaknesses which are many, over come them. I am going to digress from training for just a minute here and say that I was deeply convicted by the Holy Spirit that there are some spiritual disciplines that need the same perseverance applied to, and that is going to be a priority. There are still people in my life that comment that they are surprised that I did it, or on a new distance or challenge they doubted I could do it, even this last Saturday. Not sure what I have to do to prove myself to them, but am sure I don't care. It's not necessary to prove myself to anyone EVER AGAIN. I still hear that I'm crazy and people ask me why I do it. Not sure I have one definitive answer, but I guess because I CAN. I keep waiting for it to get easy. Hasn't happened, but I haven't fallen out of love with the run, so I'll keep going.

I juggled my rest days from Monday to today, will cross train tomorrow. This week is
Monday - strength and elliptical
Tuesday - 8 mile run
Wednesday - 5.5 mile run to ball field
Thursday - cross training, trail ride
Friday - rest
Saturday - 14 mile run, running with a friend from church who is training for a marathon and has a 9 mile run and has never run that far before. Then I get to run another 5 miles.

I praye that you all would be strong and healthy. God bless.