All week long, I have had one thought on my mind: tomorrow’s 26-miler.
This has made for an interesting week. It’s like having an upcoming Oscar red carpet appearance. Mental bandwidth is pretty much taken up with that one thing. Despite this, the week has gone fairly smoothly. I even got serious about scheduling for the next few months, which will help a lot.
Yet the run looms large in my mind. After all, I have run 26 miles on only two occasions. Both times I was handed a medal afterwards (the first medal came from my wife, since it was for my solo marathon). Sure, there are many differences between tomorrow and last year’s marathons. For one, tomorrow is a training run, emphasis on training. The main goal is the endurance benefit. It is also seven weeks out from the culminating run, not the culminating run itself. I admit, I love how the Galloway program has these looong training runs. But even more, I love how doable they are.
When I started this marathon training program, I hoped the program would be less intense than last year. Indeed, that has transpired. I have had a great time. Though some of the long runs have still been intense, overall, the program has been quite gentle compared to last year’s programs.
I’m digging it.
Meanwhile, I got fewer than 24 hours before I run the first of three full marathons over the next seven weeks (one of them is a marathon plus three miles!).
No wonder I got marathon brain 🙂