Marathon Training and its Hardships

I’ve posting so late on this. I’m sorry.

But I’ve been struggling with training in the past 2 weeks that I seriously questioned my will to run my first marathon. I felt over my head and way overwhelmed. I had my first non-car induced anxiety attack this morning about my 15 mile long run that I’ve postponed by 2 days…now it’ll be a full week until I have another long run next Sunday.

So these two runs are from a while back.

But each one was great! So at least there is something great to share.

Passed this on one of my 5 mile runs. I don’t know, it just struck me as beautiful. I’ve going to go on a limb and say this is from one young couple in the middle of young love. Probably more like lust, but I loved seeing it. You never know what you come across on the Greenway.

Like this.

THIS.

IS.

TERRIFYING.

First off, I am proud of myself for getting this picture. Secondly, I used my iPhone focus and managed to not scream in public. That sucker was HUGE. I’m talking like silver dollar size. Ok, enough of that. I saw this while running a portion of my 14 miles last week.

I can honestly say this was great. Proud running moment! Negative splits. AWESOME. And I ran with my new hydration belt, I’ll be sure to do a post on it. I needed something with more bottles. But it leaves me with some serious sweat stains.

What running in Georgia’s humidity looks like. All that sweat was from my belt, but I’ll deal with it as long as it keeps me adequately hydrated.

My first run in the new Wave Inspire 10s 2 weeks ago. I broke them in with 13 miles…and yes, it did kinda hurt. But my other ones were ready for retirement. But I always run past this “mark” at the trailhead, and it looks just like a running shoe. Well I finally managed to snap a photo. And apparently I’m the only one who thinks it looks like a shoe.

So marathon training is hard. I mean, really. I thought I’d be more upbeat about it. But as I’m getting more into high mileage, I’m realizing that it is exhausting. I do love running, and I’m incredibly proud of myself for taking on this challenge. But I’m thinking once I’m done with this race, I might stick with half marathons for a while. And I get that I’m saying this now, I haven’t even ran my full yet. I’ll probably be so elated that I’ll see which one I want to do next, but I’m working my way around all this exhaustion. Working 6 days at 40+ hours (you awesome people doing this with kids plus full time jobs are AMAZING 🙂 while running 20-30 miles a week is a lot. But I’m learning. I’m making mistakes, crying, getting hurt, and then I’m falling back in love with it. Because a sane person would never do this for fun! But having these days off have really helped, minus my anxiety attack this morning. I am however ready to tackle this beast and be done with it…because I’m running out of food in my house that I constantly stuff my face with. Just saying.