Twenty Six Point Two

These past few months have been devoid of blogging for a few reasons.  One of them being I don't always have that many interesting things to say (jury's still out on this in fact) and the other being I was training for a marathon!  I found a banana while wearing my running shoes the other day, so I thought that was a good enough reason to write about my current running endeavors and brag about how great my friend and I are.

Bananas are related to marathons because they’re an awesome and cheap post race snack hand-out.  During my 42km jaunt at last Sunday's Portland Marathon, I saw banana costumes, a few sort of cute but mostly depressing signs that said a paraphrased version of “You’re running 4+ hours in miserable weather all for half a banana!”.  I also saw tons of peels on the ground because race volunteers were handing our our fave fruit at mile 20 (what did I say? Cheapskates).  In addition to learning that bananas have a big presence at marathons, here’s a highlight reel of the top takeaways I have from the past 4 months of sore muscle-filled and exhaustion-inducing marathon training:

• I can’t do it alone.  I learned early on in this training round that as much as I wanted to be one of those disciplined people that can get in the metaphorical zone and stay in it for dozens of miles, I wasn’t.  I needed people with me to remind me what the hell I agreed to do and how long I agreed to do it for.  Running partners made this whole thing possible and immensely worthwhile. Period.*
• You sort of have to pay attention to what you eat.  It was a lovely 95-degree morning in Lyon, France this past July and I decided to trot 4 miles worth of river-lined running paths because marathon training while traveling was going to be glorious and wonderful and a great way to keep in shape.  Thing was, that’s a huge joke.  At that point the healthiest thing in my diet was the 4 leaves of spinach that garnished my previous night’s dinner of cheese crepes, ham and cheese crepes, tomato and cheese crepes followed by a dessert of nutella crepes, cinnamon sugar crepes, strawberry jam crepes and 5 glasses of wine.  I am honestly surprised I’m not still stomach cramping from that run.  Anyway, training really improved once I cut back on the sugar/alcohol just a bit.  
• To get better, you have to make yourself uncomfortable.  This is the grand takeaway—the come to Jesus realization, the aha moment, the large lesson learned—from this whole process.  It didn’t come suddenly exactly, it built up over time--in the final pain-filled miles of my numerous long runs, in those agonizing moments on a treadmill in a dark room when the instructor yells over the blaring house music to increase your speed “one last time”, in the seconds after the alarm clock goes off at 5:30AM on a Saturday.  In those times, when all I was thinking was “this sucks so bad when can I go get a huge warm coffee and curl into a small ball”, I can now admit I experienced some amount of personal growth.  I don’t think I actually got that much stronger or fitter physically, but in those moments of making myself uncomfortable to the max, of burning lungs and tired legs and angry thoughts, I was finally building a tiny bit of the mental toughness that real athletes have been talking about awhile. But it’s not just an athlete thing.  I’ve heard the same story time and time again, that to grow you have to step outside your comfort zone.  I think before this I thought that meant to occasionally try a new food or drive your car a little closer to “E” before getting gas.  But now I think I finally get it, that to get better at something, you have to make yourself uncomfortable, not just once but time and time again, every time you do the thing you want to get better at.  It’s super hard, to really do that.  But a super valuable lesson to finally understand. 
• Hobbies are weird.  You pay $150 dollars for a race that's eons away.  Then you devote all your outside of work time and energy to do this thing YOU paid for in the first place.  No one’s forcing you, there’s no huge prize beyond a long sleeve tech t-shirt.  You run and then go to running groups and meet other runners who are somehow interested in doing the same thing.  And you do that day after day, week after week.  And you talk about it, incessantly.  Because you're nervous, because you have nothing else to talk about.  And then, when your event comes, you travel and see your friends but don’t even see them that much because you have to go to bed, and then it pours for the entirety of your $150 race and you finish and go eat eggs benedict with your dad and brothers as you alternate between overheating and freezing because your body is like wtf??! Hobbies are weird.  
• It was so much fun.  Being uncomfortable is hard. Hobbies are weird. But that finish line feeling of accomplishment is a really real thing that I wouldn't trade for a million unsore muscles or no alarm-clock Saturdays.

*A huge thank you to all the running partners that trained with me (aka I trailed behind on the constant verge of keeling over).  I’m grateful for the family members, close friends (that girl in the pink!), friends turned runners, acquaintances turned friends and dates turned, well, failed dates, that ran with me at some point in this arduous process.  You all pushed me to be better even if you didn't know you were.