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Monday, June 27, 2011

Change of Plans

A few weeks back, one of the two friends that I have been planning on running the marathon with called me up and said that he wouldn't be running due to an ongoing hip injury. He said that he would still come up to Nova Scotia and cheer us on, but that there was definitely no way he could run.
The first thing I did was ask him to RICE it for a week or two and try and run and see if it got any better. I had just come off of a very similar type of issue and this strategy worked well enough for me return to training relatively hard.
He rested up and ran 20 a week ago today. He gave me a call right after to thank me for gently pushing him to give this a try before making a rash decision. We were back on!
However, we had decided on Nova Scotia primarily because of his interest in attempting to qualify for Boston. Most marathons are either in the spring or fall and the timing just worked well for a summer vacation. Plus, its cooler in Nova Scotia. But now, after not being able to properly train, he believed he had no chance to put up a qualifying time in 3 weeks.
So, I did some research, and found this:
www.madmarathon.com
It is two weeks sooner, but also 600 miles (4 times) closer. No offense to Nova Scotia, and road trips are badass, but we're going to be running a marathon. The following two days, I imagine, are going to be lost in a haze anyway.
Plus now we can plan an even more badass trip on the week that we are already scheduled vacation. We'll probably backpack the White Mountains, but those details are for a different blog.
So, here we are. I just finished my first and last 20 mile run. I only ran over 30 miles maybe three times. I am banged up and starting to question my ability to have a long career as a distance runner.
All this is true, but I am confident that I will accomplish my one and only goal here: finish and survive a marathon. And at that point, I will probably reflect on all the pain and suffering, all the hard work, and all the trash I talked about distance running and realize that in fact I loved every minute of it.

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