VCM

Third week at the new job, going okay. And the running situation is good, the fitness room in the building is so convenient. I ran every day this week, 30 miles total, 4.2, 6.5, 6.5, 6.2, and 6.6. Amazing for me. Monday was recovery from my awesome Half Marathon last weekend, I was pretty dang tired though. Tuesday and Wednesday were okay. Thursday was no fun at all for some reason, really dragging. Today was better, in my Nike Frees. All pretty similar paces, around 7:50 down to 6:30, 7:08 average or so, mostly 1.5 incline, first/last 2.0-5.0.

Workouts have probably been way too homogeneous according to conventional wisdom, but I'm just trying to get my mileage up, build some base, as I've never really done before, and most importantly, without breaking down my shins. And thanks God, they both seem to be holding up okay, knock on wood, a breakthrough possibly. This is also what's keeping me motivated. I'm agnostic, but I made a deal with God a while back — if He fixes my shins, then I'll work hard and train for a marathon. I'm on the hook.

And today I got my Vermont City Marathon Handbook in the mail. It's got me excited and anxious. I realized that I'm nearly constantly in a state of low level anxiety about running, it's so silly I know, it's not like it's actually important, I guess this qualifies as an obsession, why else would I be publicly blogging about it. Midlife crisis scheiss. If I don't go for it now, I'll regret it forever.

At the same time I can't believe I'm doing this, it' hard, I'm staring down the barrel of a 19 miler this weekend and it's freaking stressing me out, why. This is a voluntary activity, right? I don't have to do this. Doesn't feel like it though, voices in my head — lazy bugger, get moving, get to work, run. It won't be so bad, did 16.5 two weeks ago, I survived, just one more time around my lake. Concentrate on the benefits, getting stronger, my resting heart rate is noticably slower in the past couple weeks, definitely below 50 now.

I'm such a Charlie Brown, still can't fully commit psychologically, but I'm going through the motions. Making arrangements for the weekend in Burlington, Vermont, but at the same time, I can't believe I'm actually going to do this thing. I only hope that after a couple longer runs, the idea of running a marathon will be similar to what I feel about the half marathon, which used to seem almost unimaginably far to me, but which I now can run at a faster pace than I ran 5K races less than two years ago.