I had to drag myself to the Running Room last night. “What did I get myself into?” went through my mind the entire 6km tempo run. The ground was icy and the wind was chilly, -5 chilly and my face hurt against the headwind. Tuesday runs are run at a pace where you can barely say a word to build your lactic acid threshold. If I had the breath to, I would have been cursing the entire way but I didn’t. I probably sounded like a dying animal the last km.

I do enjoy the dreamy concept of running AFTER I’m done my run though. I’ll even go as far as to say that I feel great after my run so much so that I could probably run even more. Funny how we forget about the discomfort we endure during the training process only to trick ourselves into doing it again, and again, and again. Running clears my head, and it lets me think long and hard about the choice I made to get out and run a marathon. Before our run, we had a talk and hand out about our journey. The part that stuck out the most was this:

“Some say that everyone can run 32km but the real marathon starts at 32km. Hence, we train to run the last 10km not just the first 32km.”

I chewed on that thought last night and today and thought THIS is why I signed up – to strive for something that I feel is a mental and physical feat. You may have heard about “the wall” that runners hit when their bodys stores are completely depleted at around the 32km mark. Training attempts to push that wall further and further away but you will inevitably hit it. I want to get to that point where my body and mind will say “no more, I quit, I’m done” and push it to go further…maybe it’ll build some character into me along the way 😉