Marcia at Marcia's Healthy Slice frequently does Runfession Posts. They are always fun to read, and I often find myself nodding along in agreement. Now that I'm marathon training, I'm finding myself often scared. My thoughts often end up turning to the what-ifs, the self-doubts and sometimes just plain old being scared.
I almost saved this for Fun for Friday, but it's sort of a Thursday Thoughts kind of post too. But mostly it's random thoughts that I need to confess.
1. Training plans scare me. Yes, I'm a certified running coach. Yes, I put together plans for other people. Personally? I hate plans because the finality, the perceived strictness of them scares me. Therefore, I'm doing a very lose, very un-written down kind of marathon training plan.
2. Not having a true plan scares me. Don't you just love it when one thing scares you but then not having it scares you too? So not having the plan written down in stone makes me scared that I'm shooting myself in the proverbial foot here, that I will fail utterly and completely.
3. I'm scared of injuries. I've really only been running for about 6 1/2 years now. In that time I've experienced IT Band problems, I've had plantar fasciitis in both feet at different times and even tearing my left one, I battle piriformis syndrome and have had posterior tibial tendinitis. Can my body really handle not just 26.2 miles but ALL the miles done to train for that day?
4. Running solo scares me (sometimes). I think it's the super dark mornings that are upon us, but I get myself really spooked some mornings. I've jumped at my own shadow, sprinted when I heard leaves rustle, and nearly talked myself out of heading out. But sometimes it's not just the early morning darkness, sometimes it's just running alone and hoping I have the inner motivation, drive, gumption to finish a long run. They can get pretty lonely, especially if you start letting your mind play tricks on you with doubts.
5. I'm scared of the race route. It's supposed to be flat and fast. They almost always say that right? I know that route, however, and the first part will be over a bridge, up hills, up more hills, another incline stretch, another bridge, back over that bridge immediately, then there will be a reward of downhill until you get to the first bridge then head into another bridge you get to traverse twice. Phew. No worries. I'll just do hill repeats for the next 3 months.
6. I'm scared of losing motivation. I'm not even hitting crazy high miles yet, max week has been 46 miles (yes that is high I realize), but I'm starting to want to easily let myself off the hook for any sort of cross-training. I love lifting weights and riding the bike, but when? Oh...right...that darn plan! So I'm worried that I'll lose my motivation for any workouts period.
Got any runfessions you care to share? Any marathon or half-marathon runfessions?
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