Am I Running The Marathon?
It’s been 47 days since I went for a run.
It is a little over a month until I run a marathon. A little over a month until I run 26.2 miles.
You could say that I’m starting to get slightly concerned about this. Because I am.
I stopped running on April 30th because of some pretty intense ankle pain. I was expecting to take a few weeks off and be back at it able to pick up where I left off. Of course, that’s not at all what happened.
I’ve been biking my butt off. Whatever miles I’m supposed to be running, I double and I pedal it out. And it’s actually been pretty good. I enjoy biking so very much. I was planning to introduce some swimming too but ever since I had the idea it has been pretty chilly and rainy so that hasn’t happened.
Each time I try to reintroduce some running in the form of interval training it goes well… until the next day. When the next day rolls around my ankle is tender and so is my emotional state because it’s so frustrating!
I did some sprints one Friday a few weeks ago and had some pretty intense tenderness that still was prominent the next Tuesday and Wednesday when I went on a hiking trip. I literally hiked the pain away in those 22 miles. For real!! It’s been gone ever since and I even did a 14 mile hiking day last Saturday that resulted in zero pain.
I’ve been pretty excited about that because I have to be healing, right? Resting it has to be working. I have no pain doing any of the other activities that I do so while I’m still very active, I’m not actively pushing through pain. So healing is happening. It has to be happening!
I did some sprints as part of a HIIT workout yesterday. I woke up today feeling sore in some places, but not sore in my ankle.
No ankle pain!! None!!
Which is amazing, amazing, amazing. Thank you God. But I still feel so far behind. Not that I would be able to keep up with Mitch because he’s like a cheetah, but I know that I am capable of more than I am currently capable of. And that sucks.
I think about this marathon I signed up for back in February and the countless hours I have been investing in being able to run it even when I am unable to run. It’s all pretty discouraging. I am still committed to doing it and I fully plan to do it because as I talked about on the Holy Health podcast literally every time I sign up for something I get sick or something happens and I don’t know why it happens but I do know that I am ready to break that cycle.
I am going to break that cycle. I don’t know how, but I am determined to do so.
The message today, for you and for me, is to recognize and accept exactly where you are. To trust and know that it is exactly where you are supposed to be. And to persevere with an unrelenting fire that will shine the light on your goals and dreams so that you can see them and know that they’re possible even if the path to them was not the one you thought that you’d go down.
This is my work over the next month. Recognizing, accepting, trusting, knowing, and persevering. Over and over and over again. Right up to race day, and beyond into any other upcoming circumstance that take me on an unexpected path.
Here’s to the next month of getting my mind right and tending to my body in a perfect way to assist me in success on that 26.2 mile race day.
