The Mind Game

Last week I read a quote that said "If it were easy, everyone would do it".  How true those words are.  I've been keeping them close to me, and especially on my long run yesterday.  Why should 18, 27. 30 (insert any number here), feel easy??  But for some reason, I had it stuck in my head that it should.  Truth be told,  I think I was glamorizing marathons of years past.  Truth also be told, I've had moments in the past few weeks where I have been sorrily tempted to quit.  That this is all too hard.  Kind of a woe is me - too hard to find the time to run, not enough balance with the kids, and the worst, gosh my body just can't do this.

But I have a pretty awesome cheerleading team.  My hubby being #1.  For each of those moments I've managed to get out the words of wanting to quit, he's been there to tell me "you've been sick, give it a few more weeks", or yesterday after being exhausted from a long run "we will make our weekends less busy so you have more recovery time".  I was thinking yesterday after my long run that I owe these runs to my hubby, to my kids (especially the toddler who does not have any patience for her Mama being gone), to my parents who help out with getting the kids to and from places just so I can get the kms in, and to Clif bars, gatorade, GU, and sport jelly beans.  As a nursing Mom doing long miles, I need as many calories while on the run that I can get.

17K in I ran through a beautiful cemetary.

 Yesterday, I texted my hubby at 10K that I was feeling good.  And I was.  But at about 22K, I hit a wall.  My body was tired, and I still had 4K to go.  It was a pure mental game.  One foot in front of the other, and distract the mind from what is actually happening.  I think maybe what seperates a long distance runner, from a middle distance runner, is the ability to get past the physical, and trick the mind into thinking the ridiculous of what is happening, is ok.

And you know what happened?  I hit 26 and wasn't back to where I needed to be, and rather than stop my watch, I kept going.  I had been telling myself how good it would feel if I had run for 3 hours.  So I ran, for 3 hours, and hit 27K.  I am really proud of that accomplishment.  I don't think I could have tacked on an extra 15K to get to a marathon goal yesterday, but there are still 8 weeks to go before I need to get there.  And in those 8 weeks, alot more miles to be logged.