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Marathon Day is coming.
Months of training are over. The taper is over. Nearly all of the pieces that I can control are in place. Now it’s just a waiting time. A time to remember that worry is wasted energy. A time to remind myself to trust the training. A time to recall that I felt just as skittish before my first half-marathon.
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My body doesn’t like to have a big jump in workload, so last year I already started by running longer long runs until I’d worked up to 18 miles (3 hours). Then I divided my training into two parts: training for spring half-marathons and then training for the marathon.
I’ve been reading marathon plans for longer than I’ve been running. I was sometimes nursing Matthias on a couch, stuck with whatever material happened to be within arm’s reach and it would happen to be Runner’s World. It’s always bothered me that plans have runners run 20 miles, no more. Yes, the body is used to a jump in distance each week and, yes, the body is rested with a good taper at the end. But I hear how difficult the running gets around mile 23, and how many people then take a month off from running after a marathon. I’ve also seen many runners in the last miles of marathons, and they look like they’ve reached a state I never want to reach. This just strikes me as weird advice. Why not train more thoroughly?
So Rainer and I wrote my own plan, based on other plans. I worked my way up to 23 miles (37 km). I put hills in. Minneapolis is not a flat marathon. I worried, and so I put more hills in. We live on the cusp of the Assiniboine Valley, and I have for years usually stayed on the prairie half of the city, especially for long runs. Not this year. Train hard so you know you’re tough enough. That’s one of my running mottoes. They say running’s 90% mental, and I know this has been true at every other distance. What that means is that you have got to carry with you 1) faith in your training and 2)vmemories of hard runs that you finished despite how awful you felt.
One thing that was new to me, and that ended up being wonderful, was an every-other-week approach to long runs. Every other plan I’ve followed builds for 3 weeks and then has a rest week. Something like 10 miles, 12 miles, 14 miles, 8. Then 14 miles, 16 miles, 18 miles, 12. Building and building and building, then rest. That’s what I expected this time. But when we did some research it seemed that there was another way: a two week cycle. One weekend we’d go 18 miles, the next 10, then 20, then 12. And so on. It left me feeling more like I was playing with running. It left me feeling fairly rested.
Unfortunately, this year I had to eliminate all of the speedwork I’d normally do in late winter. My persistent hip problems were…persistent. I’ve done physio, massage, chiropractic. Speed work was the trigger for taking my left hip from ‘a little kinked’ and sending it into a spiral of knotted pain. What this means is that I’m going to be slower than I originally thought when deciding to run a marathon. And I wasn’t planning a quick marathon by any standard. So I’ve got this mucky psychology about the issue. I never expected to be fast, but now I’m worried that I’ll be really slow.
I’m not entirely certain why this is such an issue. I want to run a marathon. That’s my goal. Not walk-run. Run. (Except for while I’m at a water station because no matter how I try, I always get the water right up the nose.) So why worry now about time? Why is it so discouraging to think of running it around 5 hours rather than around 4? I mean, isn’t the ability to run for 5 hours kinda freakishly awesome? My genetics and leg length are out of my control; so I’ll never be a racer, never be elite. Yet I’m still giving 100% just like they are. They’re just blessed with bodies that translate that effort into real speed. When it comes to the mental toughness to push, we’re both matched; I’m just doing it for longer.
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That’s what’s on my mind today, as we pack up.
That and a dozen silly worries, like what if I get food poisoning? What if I can’t sleep? What if?
Ssshhh. Show up and run, Sarah. It’s your day.
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“Sometimes people tell me I am changing the world. Well, of course I am. You are too; we all are. One day, I simply started doing it deliberately.”
Amanda Jones
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How is your balance: are you making deliberate changes to the world more frequently than you are making thoughtless changes to the world?
A few things came up in the last few days that I wanted to address. They’re important questions and I often don’t remember to talk about them. I suppose I’ve been dealing with the same challenges for so long that I feel discouraged when I talk about them again and again (“I still haven’t solved this? Still same ol’ issues?”). And I do worry that I’m boring you to tears here at the blog. I probably sensor far more from my blog than I ought because I think you must be tired of _______ (knitting, homeschooling, running…)
A few days ago, Ann wrote:
What’s stumping me? The same thing that has been stumping me for several years now–how can I help my nearly 11 yo son learn? He reads okay, mostly on grade level after a year of vision therapy last year, but still writes like a kindergartner, with absolutely no interest in improving. Forget spelling, forget writing sentences independently. Copywork is all he can manage and that is daily hell.
Yeah. I totally get that. Pencil = Kryptonite is an equation that is all too familiar here. I’ve learned to just let go. We tried typing as a substitute, but that wasn’t the breakthrough I’d hoped for. I backed off. Way off. I just asked him to do a (short) sentence or two of copywork most days, and I started that only 2 years ago when he was 9. And for the rest: I decided that an allergy to pencils wasn’t going to hold back his learning. We do most of our processing of information through discussion. I will often act as his secretary when I want him to see his thoughts written out.
Readiness can’t be rushed. We can lay a groundwork. But nothing we do can take an unready human and make them ready. There are many components of readiness, too. There’s the obvious physiological readiness, but don’t forget emotional or intellectual readiness.
How often have I walked right into this wall? Too often. I’ve probably got a permanent flat spot on my forehead. But I’m getting smarter; I’m remembering it more often.
Readiness is what it is. It’s got it’s own timetable, hidden from view. Matthias has hit some special stage in the last 12 months. It seems that on every level – emotional, physical, intellectual, interpersonal – there’s been an unfolding and unkinking. I can’t take credit for it, because it’s not about me and what I did. All I can take credit for is being patient and not adding an emotional mess by forcing things.
My friend Christy has a great analogy for homeschooling. She says it’s like gardening, but where we don’t know what kind of seed we’ve been given. Have we got a shrub? A climbing vine? A shade plant? A sun-lover? Only by trying different methods of tending the plant and then noticing where and when it flourishes will we get things right.
The good news is that not everyone needs to be equally good at all things. (Outside the confines of the classroom and the report card.) My son and Ann’s son will probably never do a lot of writing by hand. But how many professions does that rule out? Not so many these days.
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Then San wrote:
Education is not a one size fits all philosophy, I know that, but with regards to kids struggling and learning, do you plan a curriculum and if it’s not taken up, leave them to follow their own path?
Sometimes I teach the material some other way – through a game or through a quick example/lecture. But I’ve also let more curricula lie useless on shelves that I can list. My goal is focused on the learning, not on jumping through any one particular hoop. So sometimes we try another approach. Or we just go ahead and leave it for a few years. Sometimes we pick that program up, even years later. It’s amazing what a confidence-booster a program that’s much too easy can be.
One of the best gifts that homeschooling discussion boards gave me was this nugget:
The program is your tool. Don’t let it turn you into its tool.
If it’s not working, put it down. Learn it a different way or at a different time. Don’t let it become something that teaches your kids to hate that subject. Or that teaches your kids that they’re dumb. Or that ruins your relationship.
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I don’t have a lot of answers. I can just tell you that patience is more important than programs. That creativity is more important than a scope and sequence chart. That there are so many ways to be a person that discovering which kind your kid will be is one of the best adventures of this life.
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all things end
beginnings happen all the time
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open eyes, open heart
Is it harvest season or sowing time? Life is so full these days that it’s both at the same time. I have so much to tell these days that I can’t find a way to start. I don’t feel as quiet as I seem; under the surface all sorts of exclamations are burbling.
I’m at the tapering stage of preparing for my first marathon. Phrases such as, “Yes! Only 2,5 hours to run today!!!” now leave my lips.
Homeschooling is working like never before. More creative, more nitty gritty, more work, more play than ever. Canadian Studies is the theme of the year and, with an election in Manitoba underway, it seemed only logical to start with Civics. We’ve even volunteered on a campaign.
Soccer is still on. Both teams won this weekend. Sandra’s off the field, slowly working her way back from a partial tear of her ACL. But she’s at every practice and every game. Rainer’s still coaching 5 times a week, even with the semester beginning and students filling the university again.
It feels like a mosaic, a montage, when I try to remember the events from even a day or two.
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dry road, water station
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Taken at Treherne, last water stop before the finish line.
Rainer did the marathon, I did the half.
Incredible. Running on the rolling gravel roads through fields of golden stubble, the scent of harvest in the air. A real prairie race. Hopefully excellent preparation for the hills in Minneapolis.
a ladybug to keep up the recent insect theme, taken before the string of frosty nights we’ve had
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“All things are difficult before they are easy.”
Thomas Fuller
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What is stumping you these days?
It may be 30 degrees out there, but it’s sweater weather for some species.
When the caterpillars are putting on their woolies…autumn approaches.
waffles and tea
To Do lists and doodles
lenses and decorations
Grade 7 and Grade 9
