First, sorry about that tag-line; it was the first thing that popped into my mind, and I know it's terrible. I'll change it soon. Anyway, as you can see, the Bread blog has been reborn and re-purposed as I prepare to run a marathon on May 1st. Only, I'm still keeping the breadblog address... because, you see, "bread"... it's like a metaphor for those things which sustain me, and... okay, really I'm just too lazy to register a separate blog.
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Monday: My designated cross-training/rest-if-needed day. This week, 30 minutes on a stationary bike.
Tuesday: 3 miles at 30 seconds faster per mile than my goal marathon pace (or, in my notation for this blog, MP - 0:30).
Wednesday: 5 miles at MP - 0:15.
Thursday: In a boring repeat of Tuesday, 3 miles at MP - 0:30.
On Friday, I rested.
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So, why on Earth would I decided to run a marathon? And why restart the blog? Unlike the first time I answered those sorts of question, this time around it's the second question that's easier to tackle: I figure the more people I talk about this, the more likely I am to actually go through with it. Also, knowing that I'll be posting my runs will help keep me honest in sticking to what The Coach tells me to do. (I should here point out that The Coach is not a real person...just what I've nicknamed the training schedule I drew up for myself. More on that, maybe, in a future post.)
So, that still leaves the matter of why I've started on this fool-crazy plan. I mean, I can come up with a lot of reasons why this won't work: (1) I don't really enjoying running by myself, and in preparing for this it sure seems like there's a lot of precisely that in store for me. (2) Before I started training (~ two weeks ago) the longest continuous run I'd ever done was probably between five and six miles. The idea of more than quadrupling that in 19 weeks is preposterous. (3) The middle of this Spring, around March, is going to get very busy for me between coursework, heading to a conference, and preparing for my prelim, and I'm not sure where I'm going to find the time. (4) It's too cold for me to really run comfortably outside, so probably the next two or three months of this will have to be run on a track or treadmill in a gym. How could that not get pretty boring, pretty fast? Well, I could go on, I'm sure, but you get my point: ordinarily there'd be no sensible reason at all for me to even be thinking about signing myself up for a run this long.
Basically, for me a marathon has just one thing going in its favor: in nature it is almost perfectly complementary to my work towards the Ph.D. Lately I've decided that the mood I'm in is decided too entirely by how my last day at work went, and this is, I think, problematic. After all, while the goal -- finishing my degree -- is very well defined, the actual process of research is not. "Completing the thesis" is just some vague and dauntingly challenging objective far off in the future, and on any given day it's practically impossible to tell if you're any closer to finishing. In contrast, "running a marathon on May 1st" is concrete. A medium-term goal that, at the moment, seems completely unobtainable, but a goal that comes with the promise: listen to The Coach, just do what is on the schedule today, and the day after, and the next, and by the end of the first Saturday of May, you'll have accomplished something. At the moment, I find that very appealing.
Plus, of course, I'm feeling up for a good challenge, and especially one that will keep me in shape during the winter months. At first I was only going to try for a half-marathon (and, let's be honest, there's always the possibility that's what I'll end up retreating back to), but that just didn't seem like it would be enough of a challenge and enough of an accomplishment to keep me motivated. I mean, if pushed, deep down I suspect I could run a half-marathon right now; it wouldn't be pretty, and it wouldn't be fast, but I could probably stagger across the finish line one way or another. But a marathon? From where I sit now? Not a chance.
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Saturday: 5 miles at MP.
Sunday: 8 total miles. 6 at MP + 0:15, then the last 2 at MP - 0:15. Right now, I really dislike whoever came up with the idea of running negative splits.
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Currently reading: Just finished Murakami's "Norwegian Wood," which I enjoyed reading... haven't decided yet, though, whether I liked it more or less than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Probably a bit less, but I'll have to think it over. Anyway, just about to start DFW's "The Broom of the System."
Current estimate of what I think the odds are of me following through with this and being able to finish on May 1st: 60%
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I've noticed that there seems to be an unusually large intersection between people-who-earn-PhD's and people-who-run-marathons.
Having done both, I will give you some unsolicited advice: if your course has hills, make sure you train for them, even though The Coach may not require it. Also, practice consuming whatever sports drink or gel you select, both when you're not running and when you are, and be aware that different flavors may have different effects.
Good luck! It may seem impossible - it certainly did to me, and I started training at what sounds like a similar point - but with tenacity and a bit of luck you can totally do it.
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