Friday, April 13, 2012

In the Lap of the Gods

The last few days before a marathon are always a bit nutty.  My husband and kids know I will be border line psychotic as the lack of running, building anxiety and stress of planning the race logistics begin to kick in.  As I said to Q-Less on our last run yesterday, when we were both feeling sluggish and as she put it 'a bit of an oaf', our true victory was succeeding in meeting every pace goal in the ambitious training plan us through over the last few months, but at the back of my mind is the race and only the race.

The prediction of 80f temperatures for Marathon Monday have provided a nice focus for my pre-race anxiety.  The sore throat I woke with today, the lingering hamstring pain are all pushed onto the back burner so my OCD self can focus on the weather.  I must have googled different local and regional forecasts every hour so far today - my internet history does not make pretty reading.

Monday saw this behaviour begin, as I started anxiously scanning early weather reports with very mixed results, but almost all of them warmer than than the 55f I was looking for.  Cool, cloudy windless day would have been nice.  Seeing 70f forecast was not a happy thought.  Thankfully a truly awesome guy I work for, managed to dig up the only obscure European model forecast that had 50's anywhere in it with a 40 mph tail wind to boot - my one glimmer of hope.  It was to prove a temporary fix to my mental instability, like a mini prozac that lasted but a few hours.

Today the forecasts are worsening, and yet more emphatic that there will indeed be a freak heat wave in Boston on Monday.  There is a certain inevitability to this - like death and taxes, you just can't change the weather.  The bold black numbers don't apologize, they just state, clearly and unequivocably, especially after last year's near perfect conditions, which I of course missed, due to the need to go on an all inclusive resort in Mexico for spring break!

One of my worst fears has been hot weather in a long race - growing up in England I don't do heat.  I have scorned Disney marathons, even Chicago because they might be over 50f and here I am facing the prospect of running at 2 pm on one of the hottest days of the year in what would ordinarily have been chilly New England.  As they say in my part of the world 'shit happens'.

Merciless' little girl Annika put it into perspective, when she asked if Q-Less and I were being paid to do the race.  When she heard we weren't getting money for our efforts she was stunned.  Then she asked with even more incredulity 'do they have to pay to do the race?' and then when she heard how much entry fees were, she looked at her mother as if the world suddenly made no sense at all, and suggested with a rather old fashioned look that perhaps we just shouldn't do it.

Chasing the unicorn makes no sense on a logical basis, it is an emotional journey.  It is about the need to challenge yourself and expose yourself to life and all it offers, not just the 'good weather days'.   My panic is slowly changing to resignation, my pace goals may have to go out of the window, staying hydrated, and finishing without ending up in the medical tent might now be my reach goals.   An elite runner of a certain age put together a corporate team once who had a very sound mantra.  Their hands would go into the middle before a race and he would urge 'the boys' to solemnly repeat the group chant 'Dignity and Bowel Control'.  Q-Less and I will now be racing together, no longer chasing PR's, but hoping for a positive race experience.   Monday will be about facing your worst fears, about adapting to the vagaries of life, and about flexibility and resilience.  I have a feeling that this will be both 'the best of times' and 'the worst of times', but it will certainly be memorable.  Let's hear it one more time - Dignity and Bowel Control!

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