Milwaukee Marathon Training - Week 5 Begins - Well, this is new!

Even though I'm only 34, sometimes I feel like I rarely do brand new things in my day-to-day life. Sometimes I'll check out new restaurants or neighborhoods during the week and during a very special week, I'll get on a plane to check out different restaurants and neighborhoods in a different city. But lately, it's been months and months of the same sights, tastes, and smells. Honestly, most weeks now feel entirely indistinguishable (with dozens of goals in progress to change this as soon as possible because I'm going a bit mad in Madison).

It seems a bit silly to even write about this new event, but I've never done it before and I'm proud of the work that I've been putting in to make it happen:

On Saturday, I was scheduled to run 9 miles for my long run of the week. Unfortunately, for the second week in a row, Bitsy the Cat kept us up for most of the night as she incessantly scratched at our bedroom door from 3am to 6am for wet food. I woke up feeling exhausted and growingly nervous about completing my longest run since my summer trail half marathon in a now windy and balmy 28 degrees.

While I am impressed and a little envious of those runners who get up bright and early on their Saturday or Sunday morning to dominate their long run, I am not that runner. I need a few hours to slowly mosey into the day with some reading on the couch, coffee drinking, and a few BMs.

After eating half a box of Milk Duds and drinking a mug of coffee, I was ready to crank out those 9 miles (also working on that water drinking habit as I was seeing white glowing specks in my vision around mile 6, which can't be great).

Since I started this marathon training plan four weeks ago, I've already noticed a steady improvement in my speed, even though I haven't placed any goals or expectations on pace for training or day-of-race. Well, I'd like to finish under 5 hours I suppose. I actually haven't even been paying any attention to my watch while running, except glimpsing at the distance every now and then to make sure I'm not way off the intended mileage.

In fact, the last few times that I've gone out to run I've told myself that I want to be slow and steady and not take any rest breaks, but then my legs get moving and I'm sprinting up and down hills for no reason. This faster pace won't be sustainable for me for anything past 10 miles, so moving forward, I've really got to slow down and focus more on going the distance than getting there under 9 minutes/mile.

However, I'm still going to celebrate my new achievement of running 9 miles, all under 9 minutes, with the last two being under 8 minutes (and uphill!).

I'VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE! THIS IS BRAND NEW! My body and brain can still do tough new things!

It feels great committing my time and effort to this new challenge, and already seeing glimpses of improvement in my performance by the end of week 4.

As a middle of the pack runner, I'm more than happy to float around with the 9:15/9:30 mile group. My self-worth as a runner has very little to do with how quickly I can get to the finish line, but more about how I feel becoming a person who has a future finish line to cross.

Every week feels a bit scarier as I get closer to distances that I've never done before - but just like I'd never finished nine miles at a 7:58 pace, I've never run more than 13.1 miles at once, and in a few weeks, I'll prove to myself that I can also run 14, 18, and 26.2 miles...no matter how long it takes me.