Lengthy Goals

Oh my gosh I am so sore today.  On Saturday mornings, I take this Cross Fit style class where we: run, do "flying" burpees, jump squats, lunges, pushups, and then side shuffles.  Then we repeat that 4 times.  At the end we do some more pushups and planks and supermans and then we (finally!) stretch.  It's an hour long class and it just about kills me.  Which means, of course, that's it's my favorite.

When I look around at the other people in the class, I can so easily divide everyone up into groups.  There are the people who want to be there, give it their hardest and leave dripping sweat.  There are the people who come and try but take a lot of water breaks and make faces at the instructor because can-you-believe-he-is-asking-us-to-like-push-ourselves?  Then there are the people who must think that just being at the gym makes them get in shape.  Fitness by osmosis, I gather.

I went for a physical last week, and my doctor asked when I was going to run a marathon.  Not if.  When.  And I said "Oh, no, that's for crazy people.  I mean, the first marathoner dropped dead!"  He encouraged me to do it, but I complained again, "Isn't it bad for my knees?" He assured me they made great knee replacements now.  I just couldn't talk him out of it.  He is also a semi-runner like myself (we run but it's not our only form of exercise, and we only occasionally train for a race) but he wants to push himself to run a marathon before he turns 40.  

Only Phil's size 14's could make my feet look petite.

So on Sunday, I went for a run with all of this couldI.shouldI.wouldI train for a marathon running through my head.  It was hot and muggy out and I ran the first 3 miles at a good 8:30 pace, then I ran back home and picked up John-Paul (age 10) and Andrew (age 8) to run a couple miles with me because they are supposed to run a Father's Day 5k with Phil next weekend.  J-P ended up walking back home due to a chest cramp from doing this that morning:

Ten years old, and he's finally staring to earn his keep.

But Andrew and I ran on, I made sure we were pacing ourselves at 11 minute miles and we chatted the whole time and I dropped him back off at the house after 2.2 miles and then ran another mile to make my total mileage six for the day.  That's my standard run length, but I was a bit sweatier than usual #cantstandtheheatgetoutofthekitchen.  While I was running nice and easy with Andrew, I realized that I could probably run a marathon at this pace.  It would take me almost 5 hours to finish though, and that's where my darn competitive side kicks in and says that's not fast enough.  And if I'm not going to train to run it at my fastest, then is it even worth it?  Then my lazy side tells my competitive side to go take a hike.  And my competitive side says "Oh I'll take the longest, hardest, and fastest hike ever!!" and storms off.

So right now, I'm just starting to contemplate running a full marathon on the sooner side of later.  I am telling people that I will run the half marathon again in March, so that should hold me accountable, because if there's one thing bigger than my competitive streak, it's my Irish pride.  Maybe after I finish that race, I will discern (nothing like a good Catholic discernment) if I think a full marathon will be possible.  But until then, it's back to my weekly mix of running, arc machine, kickboxing classes, cross fit workouts, and spinning classes.  So I can keep eating things like this.... 

...with a side dish of zero guilt!