One more thing off my checklist!!

Last fall I ran my first 5k with Kelli when the law school did one as a fundraiser for various charities. I did not bother to train at all and I struggled to keep up with Kelli (at a pace of roughly 8 minute miles) who had run several before and had been running occasionally in the evenings. Although I played soccer pretty much year round in high school and did track my senior year, I never really considered myself a runner. However, I do try to stay in reasonable shape and the 5k was a wake up call. So at the beginning of the summer I decided that it was time to check off one more item from my list of things to do in life (yes, I have an actual list and I think it has helped me do things that I would not otherwise have done). I began training for a marathon. Kelli's first response was "Yeah right, do you know how much work it is to train for a marathon?" Obviously that hurt my pride enough to make me actually do it because the next day I paid the non-refundable entrance fee for the United States Air Force Marathon at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and I convinced Kelli to run the 10k as well.

I am not sure which is the greater accomplishment, finishing a marathon or running 528 miles in three months to train for a marathon. Kelli was right that it was hard work, but the training was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Mostly it was just a big time commitment because I had to run 4 days a week and most Saturdays were taken up by long runs followed by laying on the couch recovering. I initially just set my goal to finish and did not care how long it took me, so I never had to push myself faster than my natural pace during training. I found that listening to audiobooks on my iPod was a good way to pass the hours spent on the trail. (I finished 7 or 8 books, including Moby Dick which is very long and not especially entertaining). I first timed myself while running near the end of my training when Kelli rode her bike along the trail with me for twenty miles and timed each mile. I was surprised to discover that I was fairly consistently running each mile in approximately ten minutes. Based on that, I set my goal to finish the marathon in 4:30, which is two minutes better than the men's national average.

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I can't decide if setting a time goal was a good idea or not. It definitely pushed me to run harder on race day, and I finished in 4:30:08. However, trying to keep the pace the whole time sure made the last six miles miserable. I definitely thought the actual marathon was significantly more difficult than any of my long training runs. Maybe it was because the course had more hills than I had trained for. Maybe it was because I got a cramp in my leg at mile twenty which I had never experienced in training (I am not sure what you are supposed to do with a cramp, but I just kept running and tried to massage it as I ran and it eventually went away, then came back a couple times, then went away).

The sense of satisfaction that you feel when you cross the finish line is great, but it fades quickly when you find out that after all of that hard work you have actually gained weight (maybe I am skinnier and more muscular, but I can't really tell...I should have done before and after photos). It was also a little embarrassing using the elevator at the law school the Monday after the race because I was too sore to walk down three flights of stairs. While I am glad that I did this, I still don't consider myself a runner. Although I do plan to continue some sort of exercise to stay in shape, there are too many things to do in life to repeat the same thing twice. Perhaps a triathlon or some mountaineering expedition are options for the future, but I have no plans to continue running marathons.