"nasty"
Last night I was playing a game with some friends called "apples to apples." Basically the way the game works is one person pulls a green card that is an adjective of some sort. They read the card and everybody else pulls a card out of their hand and throws it down. Then the person who read the green card picks the best response. It is supposed to be a word association game, but you get rewarded for speed so that isn't always the case. Anyway, someone threw down the card "running a marathon" in response to "nasty." This provoked a conversation as to just how nasty and gory running a marathon could be, including a discussion of bleeding nipples. The consensus was that "running a marathon" was quite nasty, and Lucas pointed at me and repeated "nasty" several times before deciding that another card was worse. The whole thing was very funny, and leads in to a question that is being asked of me more and more often... Why a marathon?
My mentor, Lisa, has run thirty six. She has also run two ultras (50 miles). She was running one every month for awhile and has been known to run two marathons within a week of each other. She loves hilly courses. She scares me. After talking about her thirty-six marathons, Su asked her why. What is it about running a marathon that would drive you to run thirty-six. Her answer, "when I ran my first marathon, I thought, I should have been doing this all my life, it just felt so good." She claims she ran he last six miles with a doofy elated grin that scared the people at the water stations.
That has to be a one in a million reaction to running a marathon. I can't believe that most of us finish our first marathon and find that it feels right to run for four hours. That it somehow fills a hole we never knew we had. That we were born to run, the way that Lisa feels as though she was born to run. I certainly don't feel that in my training runs. Instead they are predictably painful. Prior to yesterday I had never run ten miles. Now I have. How did the extra two miles feel? They hurt enough that my legs were sore yesterday and today. Which is not to say that they weren't satisfying. I am proud that I ran them. I am very proud that I ran 10 miles in one and hour and 38 minutes, because that means I was running sub-ten minute miles. But never, not for one moment did I feel elation.
So most likely, I will not feel as Lisa did during the last six miles of my marathon. But I never thought that I would. Still, I've already picked out two marathons that I want to run someday. The Marine Corps Marathon (I'm from DC after all) and The Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco (you get a Tiffany's finisher necklace). And in the back of every marathoner's mind (if I can claim that moniker) is the Boston. Consequently, unless things go very poorly in Alaska, there is a good chance that I will train for another marathon, or two or three in my life. Maybe even more. Hopefully I will not run thirty-six.
But all of this still hasn't answered the question of why I would run a marathon at all. I knew one person growing up who ran marathons, and I always had a certain amount of awe for her. So at some point in my childhood running a marathon took on the significance of being the ultimate feat of physical endurance and dedication and part of me has always wanted to rise to that challenge. Also, setting the goal of completing a marathon, has led me to become a much more disciplined and regular runner. Now on cold and rainy days, I find myself squeezing in my run anyway. This spring it has kept me from getting bored with running, or at least kept me running even during the weeks that I would really rather not.
I don't know what crossing the finish line will feel like. I hope that I do feel elation. I hope that I don't wonder too much why anyone would ever do this to their body. I hope that my nipples don't bleed.
This week in running:
Monday - 5 miles
Tuesday - 4 miles
Wednesday - 8 miles
Thursday - rest
Friday - rest
Saturday - 10 miles
Sunday - 3-4 miles???
Total: 30 miles
My mentor, Lisa, has run thirty six. She has also run two ultras (50 miles). She was running one every month for awhile and has been known to run two marathons within a week of each other. She loves hilly courses. She scares me. After talking about her thirty-six marathons, Su asked her why. What is it about running a marathon that would drive you to run thirty-six. Her answer, "when I ran my first marathon, I thought, I should have been doing this all my life, it just felt so good." She claims she ran he last six miles with a doofy elated grin that scared the people at the water stations.
That has to be a one in a million reaction to running a marathon. I can't believe that most of us finish our first marathon and find that it feels right to run for four hours. That it somehow fills a hole we never knew we had. That we were born to run, the way that Lisa feels as though she was born to run. I certainly don't feel that in my training runs. Instead they are predictably painful. Prior to yesterday I had never run ten miles. Now I have. How did the extra two miles feel? They hurt enough that my legs were sore yesterday and today. Which is not to say that they weren't satisfying. I am proud that I ran them. I am very proud that I ran 10 miles in one and hour and 38 minutes, because that means I was running sub-ten minute miles. But never, not for one moment did I feel elation.
So most likely, I will not feel as Lisa did during the last six miles of my marathon. But I never thought that I would. Still, I've already picked out two marathons that I want to run someday. The Marine Corps Marathon (I'm from DC after all) and The Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco (you get a Tiffany's finisher necklace). And in the back of every marathoner's mind (if I can claim that moniker) is the Boston. Consequently, unless things go very poorly in Alaska, there is a good chance that I will train for another marathon, or two or three in my life. Maybe even more. Hopefully I will not run thirty-six.
But all of this still hasn't answered the question of why I would run a marathon at all. I knew one person growing up who ran marathons, and I always had a certain amount of awe for her. So at some point in my childhood running a marathon took on the significance of being the ultimate feat of physical endurance and dedication and part of me has always wanted to rise to that challenge. Also, setting the goal of completing a marathon, has led me to become a much more disciplined and regular runner. Now on cold and rainy days, I find myself squeezing in my run anyway. This spring it has kept me from getting bored with running, or at least kept me running even during the weeks that I would really rather not.
I don't know what crossing the finish line will feel like. I hope that I do feel elation. I hope that I don't wonder too much why anyone would ever do this to their body. I hope that my nipples don't bleed.
This week in running:
Monday - 5 miles
Tuesday - 4 miles
Wednesday - 8 miles
Thursday - rest
Friday - rest
Saturday - 10 miles
Sunday - 3-4 miles???
Total: 30 miles
posted by Lynn at 10:34 AM
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