Aesthete Runner

A few days have passed since the marathon and I finally am able to put words to my experience. And what an experience it was! I finally ran a marathon and wasn't instantly filled with regrets and wishes of what could have been. Did I meet all my goals? Nope. Am I upset about it? Nope. Read on for my full recap.

We are now at less than 24 hours until the marathon! How quickly this week passed. My training this week was very light, with a focus on mobility, rest, and nutrition. Overall this taper was much needed after some hard weeks of training, and it is one of the first where I can say that I truly enjoyed all the extra rest.

ONE WEEK!! In some ways I feel like this point in training would never come, but in other ways it has flown by. Right now I am feeling good in my first week of taper, and mentally I am excited and ready for race day.

I can't believe the marathon is a month away! A few weeks ago it felt like there was still a lot of time to train, but suddenly I look at my training schedule and see that it is almost time to taper. Fall is my favorite time of year, and now that the weather has started to cool off and all things pumpkin have popped up, I am ready to run in my favorite season.

Finally, a great solid week of training! This past Tuesday marked 2 months until marathon day, and I was happy to start this week rested and ready to take on training. I finally recovered from my "fun" food poisoning adventure, and with the extra rest days during my camping trip, I have never felt more physically or mentally ready.

That's right...ONE day until my first 50k. I woke up this morning after sleeping in on a day off, and it seemed unreal that at this time tomorrow, I will be running my first ultramarathon.

To read my recap of the race, visit my previous post . Now that I have had a few days to recover both physically and mentally, I have really thought about my performance during the race. Clearly I have too much time on my hands being unemployed, but I think it is natural for anyone who commits to a goal for a long period of time to dissect things to understand what went wrong and celebrate what went well.

I cannot believe that after almost 20 weeks of training, the marathon is over. The post-marathon blues have set in and I feel a little sad that this major goal has come and gone after thinking and dreaming about it for so many months. There are never enough words to really summarize what it is like to run a marathon. It is one of those things like child birth that you can really only understand after you have done it, but I am going to try my best to put my experience into words that I can share.

TWO DAYS!! Or as the clock reminds me, less than 44 hours! It's happening!