Disney World here I come!
In 35 days I'm going to be running my first marathon at Disney World in Florida. The past few months have proved to be very challenging with injury, illness and just 'stuff'. Along the way I have learnt a few important lessons that I wanted to share with you all over the next week.
Lesson 1: The voice in your head that says you can't do this is a lying slut.
In October I travelled to Melbourne for the Marathon weekend. I was originally supposed to be doing the half-marathon in preparation for the full marathon in January. However, for those who have read my blog before you will know that I was injured at the Perth City 2 Surf and so I was sidelined for awhile. The process coming back to running was much slower than I would have liked but I had amazing people supporting me along the way.
My amazing friend Karin was running her first marathon in Melbourne (you can read her story here) and she was struggling with anxiety in the week before so I put together a selection of pictures I found online for her. One that really resonated with both of us is this one:
The inner dialogue that goes on in my head when I'm running is ridiculous! In Melbourne, I was running the 5.7km event and even though I ran a PB I knew I could have gone faster. I was scared. Scared of injuring myself more than I had been or just completely failing. Logically, I knew I was in good condition to run, but the voice in my head doesn't deal in logic.
Anyway, the past two weeks have dealt me another blow to my training: an infection coming off a cold (which itself had me sleeping for 3 1/2 days) which had me being sent for chest x-rays and on antibiotics. Let's just say that the 18km run last weekend (before the visit to the doctor) wasn't pretty or much fun.
Yesterday was a big turning point for me. A 20km run in less time than the 18km took last weekend and a much better run than the Perth Half Marathon back in August. It was one of those great runs....for the first 10km. After that it got a little bit interesting, in part because of the voice and in part because I've been on antibiotics so was getting dehydrated - but at least this week I didn't have a coughing fit every time I had a drink!
So, I leave for the USA in 6 days. In those 6 days I have 3 training sessions (Wednesday being a 23km run), Graduation evening at school, my dad's final Speech night at his school followed by a retirement function, doctors appointments and my school Christmas lunch. So it's going to be a busy week to say the least!
My plan while I'm away is to blog my training sessions and 12WBT challenges - I won't have access to scales for 5 weeks so there are no weigh ins (just my trusty measuring tape) and I will be navigating my way through eating out for nearly every meal. I think the past year doing 12WBT has prepared me for this challenge and I'm looking forward to sharing it with all of you!
