Shaken Faith

"There's an engineer on that long black train,
Makin' you wonder if the ride is worth the pain,
He's just waiting on your heart to say,
Let me ride on that long black train."

"If your going through hell, keep on movin',
Don't slow down,
If your scared run through it,
You might get out, 'for the devil even knows your there."

Where have I been? Busy I guess. These two songs have been going through my mind a lot lately. I guess they just have meaning as to what I've been feeling. How much longer is training? How much further do I have to go next week? Why did I sign up for this? Cuz I'm kind of over it. Just a little bit. I still am very excited for the race and feel good about the progress I've making and what I've done, but mine eyes have been awakened to the pain that is The Marathon. It's similar to when I was awakened to the pain that was the 10 mile, but it goes much deeper. Much deeper. It's just something that your body has to adjust to and it's always harder the first time around.

I had a good 17.5 mile run. It ended in pain and a lot of rest but generally a good feeling.

Tomorrow I'm doing 19. Close to 20 but not quite. I'll save 20 for a few more weeks.

While the long runs have been good, I've had a few rocky weeks. Last week I was on vacation in New Mexico, land of 5500 feet altitude. And I freak myself out, probably more than necessary, about how I will be affected. We were busy hiking and cooking and spending time with family, and a planned total of 19 miles, turned out to be a measly 3. The long run (which was a cutback week) of 10 miles never happened and I only did 3.2 on the Sunday we left.

This week was more of the same. Tuesday night left me devastated, running 10 miles after work with the group. Because I wasn't ready for 4 miles the next morning, it didn't get done because my evening was full, so I missed my window. No biggie, but then I didn't run yesterday either; busy evening but I could have made a choice to run instead of what I did choose. Chalk up another missing 6 miles. I'm at a 10 mile deficit for this week then too. Grrrr. I feel like crap about it and I don't want to feel like crap. I want to feel like I did when I was writing about how prepared I was going to be and how I would laugh in the face of "The Wall" come race day.

I would like September to be a solid month. No - be firm. September WILL BE a solid month. I'll be out of town again for the week of Labor Day so that week will be a challenge. I want to run a solid 5 days a week. Even if I can't get the exact mileage in (although that will be a secondary goal) the main goal to hit is 5 days a week for all of September.

Doing the math, it looks like I hit 77% of my running schedule in August (based on # of days ran over scheduled). I think I can do better. Can somebody who has ran a marathon, tell me that I'm still doing ok? I wish I could say that I was self-assured and guilt free. That I always do my best and never look back, but right now I just want to be assured that, while there is room for improvement, I'm not totally lost. I can still have a solid performance and get back to 100% in the game.

I have a hunch this will all be behind me after my run tomorrow and I'll feel back on the wagon. New shoes are in my future as well so there's always that to look forward to. I'm debating going back to Pearl Izumi's which I LOVE, or sticking with another like of Mizuno's. Tough call.