Runfessions – October

Hello and welcome to our monthly Runfessions with Marcia’s Healthy Slice, where we acknowledge our sins, running and otherwise, in the spirit of repentance (sometimes authentic) and renewal.

Montserrat, a 1,000-year-old monastery near Barcelona, Spain

This is my first and biggest runfession: on Sunday I will be running the Marine Corps Marathon and I didn’t actually, um…train. Oh, I meant to train. When we signed up last spring, there was plenty of time to train. I had a training plan. I just never executed the plan.

The plan was to begin training early and slowly build up my mileage. That worked up to a certain point, but then the traveling began.

The plan was interrupted briefly in the summer when we traveled to Colorado and Oregon to visit family, but we got back on track when we got home. Then we went to Boston and Cape Cod and it was interrupted again.

During the six weeks before the marathon, we were traveling for 3 1/2 of them. The two full weeks that we were at home were the two weeks right before the race when we should have been tapering. The problem is, however, there was no build-up to taper from.

We (my hubby Bill, my friend Nancy, and I) are running the Marine Corps Marathon to support our 78-year-old friend Dennis, who wants to do this race one last time. He has already run this particular race 30 times prior to this year. Dennis is now mostly a race-walker, so I don’t think our pace will be blazing, but 26.2 miles is a long way to go.

So.

Monday should be interesting. I may be in a lot of pain.

And then we made our first running sin even worse.

When we returned home from our beach vacation in South Carolina exactly two weeks before the marathon, we were horrified and ashamed of our lack of training. I suggested we do a long run at our projected race pace. Thirteen days before race day we traveled to a nearby rail-trail loaded up with food and drinks to carry with us on the run.

We set out on a beautiful, sunny, cool Autumn day on a rail trail surfaced with packed cinders, which runs mostly through the woods on State Game Lands.

Five miles into our planned 20-miler, Bill told me that he was getting a blister on the bottom of his foot. I asked him if he wanted to stop but he persevered for the rest of the planned run. When he showed me the blister afterward, I was alarmed: the blister was actually a discolored area deep under the skin on the ball of his foot nearly two inches in diameter.

Now being undertrained is the least of our worries.

Finally, I runfess to booking a hotel room for a half marathon I plan to run next summer without actually signing up for the race. Yet.

Have you ever done this?

Here is my thinking: I can cancel the hotel reservation, but once I sign up for the race, I am committed.

I am planning to sign up for the race before the price increases on the first of the year, but who knows what could happen between now and then. My hamstring injury could return. A weird virus could attack one of my organs (happened once before prior to a marathon). The sun could blow up.

As I get older, unfortunately, I think of all the “what ifs” that never used to cross my mind.

I am feeling pretty guilty about this. Please don’t tell Hilton.

Does anyone recognize the mountain in the photo above? It’s the site of the half marathon I am considering going to do.

Thank you for joining me in the runfessional, friends. My burden is lifted and my soul is lighter already. Come back next month for more runfessions of accumulated sins.

 

I am joining Marcia’s Healthy Slice for Runfessions and Fairytales and Fitness for Friday 5.