Post-Baby Marathon Training Log: September 22, 2009 - Here She Is Again, Right on Time
 | posted by AnnGaff, a Women Talk Sports blogger About AnnGaff: Chief Technical Officer, Women Talk Sports. I competed in Track & Field and Cross-Country in college at the University of Nebraska and competed professionally in Track & Field (3000m Steeplechase) fr...more |
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Jay-Z's "The Blueprint 3", song #5 ("Empire State of Mind") blasted through my Jetta's speakers on the way back from my massage tonight...
And since I made it here, I can make it anywhere...
When I got home, I fed the baby, changed into running clothes and took off to go for a run on the boardwalk, alongside the Pacific Ocean. I felt amazing. There was a nice breeze and my legs and arms pumped efficiently and effortlessly, as if I was back to about fifteen months ago, when I was in peak form in anticipation for the Olympic Trials. I felt like I could run like this forever; Saturday's 20-miler that had taken 3 hours and 13 minutes to complete and put me to bed that night before 9 o'clock seemed a distant memory to my legs, which have learned once again how to recover from such a run and be ready for the next. Just 3 months ago, I could barely jog for 10 minutes.
During the run on Sunday, in the final mile, I said to Danica, "This is the first time since starting to train for this marathon that I think I'm actually going to be able to do it."
I've been training for the Chicago Marathon for around 3 months, and I signed up for it a couple months before that. The whole time, I've worried that I won't be able to do it: there wasn't enough time to properly train, I wasn't going to have enough energy, I was going to fall off the training schedule, blah blah blah. Each long run has been pretty tough and painful, and I've barely finished. When you get done with an 18-miler that you'd barely finished, you don't think, "oh I can TOTALLY do a marathon," you think, "how the heck am I going to run this marathon???"
But at the end of that 20-miler, as bad as my body felt and as sick as I was of running, I felt for the first time like I was going to be able to finish this thing on October 11.
As I was cruising alongside the ocean tonight, I wondered why I continue to doubt myself. Time and time again, I always make myself prove myself to myself. Oh gosh, my junior high English teacher, Mrs. Bawden, would NOT be happy with that sentence. But it's true.
Let's put it this way: we have me and then we have Ann.
Ann is pretty accomplished. She always works really hard and usually figures out how to get where she wants to go. She's a fighter.
I doubt her capabilities all the time. She proves me wrong tirelessly, but that doesn't seem to change anything.
When she was 10, I told her she couldn't make the club soccer team she was trying out for because everyone else was almost a year older and much better players than she was. She made the team, started and played almost every minute of every game.
When she was 15, I told her she might as well quit running because she ran so terribly at the State Cross-Country Meet as a freshman. I was so embarrassed by her 60th place. A year later she was 9th. Another year later she was the champion.
When she was 21, going into her final year of eligibility at the University of Nebraska, I told her that her college career was a disappointment: she'd only qualified for a national meet one time - in Cross-Country - and she hadn't done well. Her dreams of one day winning a Big 12 Championship were out of the question, as she was nowhere near that level of competition. That year, she not only won a Big 12 Championship but became an All-American and then a US National Champion and American Record holder, all within a span of about two months.
I told her some other things along the way: that she should be ashamed of her weight, her zits, her bad hair days, and so on. And darn her, she just kept swinging her bat and knocking me back out of the park! Just when I'd think I'd have her under my thumb, she would bust out and get in my face and defend herself with a vengeance unbecoming of such a seemingly nice, polite, almost timid girl.
Well here she is again, and right on time, seeing as how the marathon is less than three weeks away. I tried to tell her she was going to be out of shape for the rest of her life, that she'd let it go and she'd never be motivated enough to get it back. I told her that she had better put that ego in check because there's no place for it around here anymore. And the attitude could go too.
But that little you-know-what started to show her face again recently and she isn't messing around. I heard her today on the run, "Look at me, you think I can't do this? What exactly do you not understand here? This is what I do - this is what I've always done - I bust through and I make things happen, regardless of what you say." I didn't have an answer for her tonight. She's right, as usual.
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- Filed Under:
- Marathon, Running, Sports, SportsPLUS, Inspiration, Psychology
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Chic Runner
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AnnGaff
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