The marathon training continues.  Yesterday we ran SEVENTEEN miles.  I know.  I’m beginning to doubt my sanity too.  The sad thing is that as insanely far as 17 miles is, it’s still 9.2 miles away from the marathon distance.  There is NO WAY I could have run another 9.2 miles yesterday.  I’m beginning to think that this marathon plan is ridiculous.  I’m pretty sure that bodies (well, at least my body) are not meant to run that far.

After about 10 or so miles, it becomes much easier to keep running than it is to stop and then start again.  If we hit a red light, I usually keep up a jogging motion in place because it’s SO HARD to start to run again.  During the last couple miles, I needed a drink, and Tim had the only full bottle left, so I asked him for it.  I stopped to walk while I drank because I just can’t get enough if I try to drink and run at the same time.  When I finished gulping sports drink, I told myself that I needed to start running again.  I willed my legs to do it.  They didn’t comply.  I said out loud, “Legs, move!”  That cracked Tim up, and he said it reminded him of one of those Sync commercials.  They finally started to “run” again, and somehow I finished.  We made it an entire 17 miles.

The last couple miles were somewhat surreal.  As Tim later described to me, “I couldn’t even tell what my legs were doing the last three miles.  It just felt like they were flopping around down there.”  I couldn’t have said it better.  What stood out to me is that as I got close to the end, all I could think about was stopping.  I just wanted to be DONE.  All I wanted was to be able to stop moving my legs.   The problem is that when I finally did stop, it didn’t hurt ANY LESS.  The pain didn’t stop.  It was JUST AS BAD to be stopped as it was to be running!  I can’t really imagine what 26.2 miles is going to do to me.   It still doesn’t seem possible at this point, but lots of people do it.  I hope that come June 21, I’ll be one of them.