"YOU LOSER!" and other inner demon quotes.

ME:

HOPEFULLY NOT ME:

So guess what the marathon is on SATURDAY!!!!!!!! AHHHHH!!!

I do not feel very ready. This is how my training has gone:

I started running in January 2 miles a day 4 days a week. By the end of that month I finally had worked my way up to 3 miles comfortably. In my opinion that is one of the hardest parts, getting up to 3 miles comfortably and consistently, and once you can do that it is not very hard to just add on miles after that. So in February I began adding in long runs on Saturdays every other week. I meant to follow like a real training plan, but it varied a lot. The way I’ve learned to train (from my mommy) is to increase your long run by 2 miles every other Saturday, and the weeks in between do half of what you did the Saturday before. My training I started with 4.5, then the next Saturday did 3, then 7, then 5, then 10, then 5, then 12, then 6, then 14, then 6, then 14.5 (I THOUGHT I had done 16, turns out I was wrong, was I disappointed!!), then 19, 13, and 7. You’re supposed to do your longest run (some people run up to 24, some training plans go to 18) like 4 weeks before the marathon and then taper down after that. I was running out of time so my weeks didn’t work out like that. Then on top of the long runs, I ran 3 or 4 days during the week just 3 miles at a time (which I have concluded is probably not enough mileage for marathon training, but hey I did what I could.)

So that is what I did and now we’ll see how things go on Saturday. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m SCARED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Like I’ll probably pee my pants the night before!!!

Yeah I’m not feeling confident, my long run this past Saturday and the week before were pretty awful. I kept thinking WHAT IS MY PROBLEM? WHY can’t I just be a great runner??? Why can’t this be easy for me?!! I was so mad at myself. Granted I do have great runs sometimes where it does feel easy, but heck if I could remember any yesterday! And that stupid little voice inside me was being a jerkface, saying “You are such a loser, Erika. You can’t do this. What are you thinking.” And I really wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. My stomach had weird pains and I was tired and I had only gone like 5 miles!!!! The thought of going 21 more made me nauseous!

So this stupid voice is one I’m familiar with. I think we all have a voice in us that TOTALLY beats ourselves up and discounts any good or positive thing about ourselves and isn’t it hard to drown that voice out sometimes?? Am I the only one with an inner demon? (just to be clear I am not talking about real voices here, just figurative!)

It drives me crazy. Then as I was running I thought of something. I may never be fast. Plenty of elite runners will pass me. Heck in past marathons you wouldn’t believe who passes me, some of these big old grannies are amazing! So yes it is true: I will never be good enough…. FOR THEM. You see what I need to focus on is being good enough FOR ME. And no one else. Comparing yourself to others only brings out paranoia and bitterness, sometimes to the point you can’t even be happy for others. Seriously that’s no way to live. Everyone is running their OWN race. I need to rely on my own strength to finish. I don’t know why I’m so scared anyway, cause in my past 5 marathons, the second I cross that finish line no matter how fast or slow my time was I feel like the most awesome person in the world, it’s an amazing feeling (definitely addicting and definitely why I put myself through training for another one… and another one…) Obviously I am comparing this to life (I can think of thousands of marathon analogies I know this is not original!) but I think it’s so beautiful. We are all running, some faster, some slower, with people cheering us on the way. During races I LOVE the spectators along the way, it really makes me faster, I know it does. And guess what? Do they only cheer for the fast people? Good-looking people? Most popular? Or the smartest? Nope everyone is cheering for everyone. I love it. It’s a powerful thing. Sometimes I have to remember yeah we each have our own race to run, but we’re all in this together. I’m my own cheerleader and I’m cheering for everyone else too.

During my run on Saturday I was feeling down and then there was a group of three runners, 2 ladies and a man and boy did they look super athletic. They flew past me and I was a little bitter. Not at them, really, just at myself cause I’m pretty sure I was walking when they went by. It was only a little later when I was running again that I saw them up ahead, and guess what, they were walking. It really opened my eyes, I was like, wow, here I thought these were amazing runners and look at them, they need to walk sometimes too. Isn’t that like life too? I know I look at other people and think WOW they are amazing, but no matter how perfect people may seem I guarantee they have to walk sometimes, they have their own trials. We are all more alike than we think. You see? We are all running our own race with our own struggles, but if we find it in ourselves to press on, we can all finish.

So I am definitely terrified of the marathon on Saturday, I mean 26 miles is pretty scary even if I had trained all I could. But I will not let my inner demon voice tell me that I CAN’T or that I’m a LOSER. Cause this is my own race and I’ll finish if someone has to drag my limp body across the finish! (but hopefully not.)