Monday marked the nine-week warning for my race. Nine weeks from now I will hopefully have this monkey off my back and I can put this Boston business behind me once and for all. The past few weeks of training have been hard mentally as well as physically. I love running. Love, love, LOVE it! But what I love the most about it is that I don't have to think...I just DO. I put on my shoes and can go as far or as fast as I want. Or at least that is how I used to run. Now I have to think about track workouts and pace and thresholds and repeats and hills and it is turning into something a lot like work. The simplicity--which is what I loved so much about running--is now replaced with conscientious effort.
Now don't get me wrong--I am thrilled to be working with a coach and more then willing to put in the work and put forth the effort. Admittedly I am curious to see how much faster I can run 26.2 with the benefit of a really good coach and set workouts. However with these workouts comes the knowledge that I can and should be running much faster. And with this knowledge comes the expectation to do better. And expectations, whether my own or someone elses, have always made me put a lot of pressure on myself. If I don't run what everyone thinks I can run I have let them down and even worse, I have let myself down. While my self-competitive nature secretly craves the discovery of "how fast can I run this?", my heart, misses the innocence of running simply for running's sake.
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