Life goes on

I will be the first to admit that I can be a little self-centered. When people ask what I've got planned for the weekend my first thought is "How can they not know that I'm running a marathon on Sunday?!?!" Ok, maybe they haven't kept up with the blog. But this thing - this running thing - has taken up a good fraction of my time and energy for the past 4 months and it all culminates in a race that's only 3 days away. So you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little bit preoccupied by it.

What I've come to realize is that the rest of the world doesn't really care that in a few short days I'll be attempting one of the greatest challenges of my life. Papers still need to be graded. Work emergencies still require my attention. Kids still call for Mommy in the middle of the night. Laundry still has to be done. The stress still piles up. Life goes on... and it doesn't cut me any slack just because I foolishly signed up to run 26.2 miles on Sunday.

I haven't felt very good about any of my runs this week. I feel tired. A lot. Now, it's true that I haven't been sleeping well so it might be expected that I'm not overly energetic, but these runs have been short ones. I should be able to do these runs without even breathing hard. And while I do run them at a good pace they seem far too difficult. I feel as though I have no energy. Unfortunately I think it's a result of being taxed on all fronts - mentally, physically and emotionally. While following my training program has prepared me physically and the tapering I've been doing should be allowing my legs to rest up for the big event, there's nothing in the program about how to taper the other aspects of life so that you're mentally and emotionlly rested as well. In fact, I believe the point I was making in the previous paragraph is that there is no way to taper life. I try to keep it to a controlled chaos and that's the best I can do.

So with 3 days left to go I'm feeling very weary. Not exactly the state I had hoped to be in at this point. Friends reassure me that I'll be fine, I can do this, I'll finish the race. I hope they're right. While I believe that, since I've done the training, I'm physically prepared I also know that my mental state plays a big role, too. Who knows... maybe this is all just pre-race jitters. Maybe I just need a good night's sleep. Maybe by Sunday morning I'll be champing at the bit to get out there. I sure hope so.