Chicago Marathon Training: A Normal Kind of Taper Madness

"I'm sick."

"My hip hurts."

"I haven't trained enough."

"What if I can't do it?"


...yep, taper madness is upon us. In the past 24 hours, I've almost broken down and cried four times (and this is after a different kind of taper madness had set in). I've been here before. I know what a mindmeld tapering can be. I've run a marathon before. I know I can do it. It doesn't help, though. Getting through taper week without a breakdown is mentally harder for me than (8) 800m repeats at pace.

I'm worrying about what my goal is going to be. I'm worried about people I'm usually faster than "beating me". What if I don't do as well as I "should"? This is supposed to be a redemption marathon. What if I don't redeem myself? 

I talked to another marathoner friend about all this this morning, and got this response:

"Yep. I get it. It's like the marathon is your big celebration party and you want the party to go perfect even though no one gives a shit if you get the wrong color napkins."

^so much this. 

Anyways, as I'm going through all this, I had this wonderful thing happen to me this morning at the office. We recently got a new admin, and she has access to all of our calendars for scheduling purposes. She saw "Chicago Marathon" on mine for this weekend, and started talking to me when I got in about it. She's done 28 marathons herself, including Chicago, so it's nice to finally have another distance runner who understands all that sort of thing in the office. 

As we're talking, she says, 

"I'm beyond impressed with you. Marathoning is one thing, but you just had a baby, didn't you? Like, less than a year ago?"

"Yeah, last Thanksgiving. He's ten months old now."

"And you found time to train for a marathon. How does that happen?"

"I have a super husband."

"But you still have to do the training. And your body went through a huge ordeal... less than a year ago. You don't even LOOK like you had a baby ever. And you're going to run a marathon this weekend. Wow. That's awesome. You're awesome."

I needed to hear that. I needed that so much, to have, essentially, a total stranger tell me I'm awesome. There was no talk of times, or splits, or goals. Just a "you're going to run a marathon, and that's awesome". It was a really necessary reminder that training in itself , what I've already accomplished, is a success. 

...I'm still going crazy, but at least I had a few minutes of reprieve this morning. :)

FOUR DAYS.