Marathon?

You ever do something that you regretted but at the same time you are glad you did?  Well that is how I am feeling right now.  I have filled out an application to be part of a one year marathon challenge. Julie at Fatty Must Run, is in the process of starting a one year training program for a marathon.  So what, you say?  Ok, well here is the catch...you have to have a BMI of 25 or more in order to be even considered.

I subscribed to her blog about a month ago and when I read the entry from 4/22 that discusses the challenge, I read it and thought to myself, "That's nice. Crazy but nice."  She wanted us to share the challenge with friends. So being an abiding reader, I went to the Active Community forums and posted a new thread.  Then went to my Facebook and shared it with my friends on Facebook.  I made it known that I was not interested but someone out there might be.  DONE!

But I kept going back to that post and rereading it. And every time I read it, the shock value of it lessened just a bit.  On Friday, I decided to submit my application.  Yikes!  Ever since then I have been on this crazy roller coaster of "gosh I hope I am picked" and "I hope I don't get picked so that I have an excuse to not do it."

There is a huge side of me that wants to be picked.  Somehow I have rationalized that if I am picked that not only will I get a training plan but I would also get super powers.  With these super powers I would be able to train for a marathon and actually run one.  I fantasize about spending my mornings training on the trails. These super powers would give me the ability to cook healthy meals, organize my day to fit in all the training that I would need and my super powers would rub off on my family and they would love the new meal plans and help more around the house so that I would have more time to train.  Man the more I think about these super powers, the greater they become.

Then there is this tiny part of me called fear.  Fear tells me that I am not ready.  That I will lose my enthusiasm early into my training and I will have to hide from everyone out of shame.  Fears says my family will look at me and say, "See we told you, you are trying to do too much."  Fear says that this will just end up in failure and when I think about that failure, it is an infinite thing.  It reaches into all areas of my life.  My home would become messy, I would eat horrible food everyday, stop running and just sit on the couch each day and regret quitting and never forgiving myself for doing so. Fear is horrible and never nice.

I don't let myself stay in that head space for long...too sad.  So I fall back on "Where there is faith, there is no fear."  And faith is belief.  So I have decided to Believe.  My mantra will be She Believed she could, so she did. I'll remind myself that I have walked 20 miles three days in a row, if I can do that, then I can run 26.2 miles in one day.  I will believe that I can do this and remind myself it is not just saying yes and then the next day going out to run 26.2 miles.  No, it means I will start out small and build up miles over time. It is the same concept as couch to 5K and I believe in that concept.

When I received my application, it came with a note about the timeline for training.  She set out dates to run certain types of races. When I compare that to what I have already signed up for, I realize that I am already doing that part.  I am already building my mileage over the next few months.  I am doing a 5K this coming weekend and will sign up for more between now and August.  In September and October I am doing two 10Ks and in December I am doing a half marathon.  All of a sudden this huge task of running a marathon seems attainable.

So the big goal of doing a marathon will be at the back of my mind but I will focus on the task at hand and when it is done, I will check it off and move to the next.  So I will run a marathon, 5K at a time.