Respect the Distance
Ok so there's a small chance I've been growing too confident about my approaching marathon. Rather than feeling scared and in awe, lately I've been so ready for this thing. Once, I would have been happy just to finish, and maybe not die. Now my brain is trash-talking my legs. "I don't care if you're hurting at mile 22... I own this race and you're going to do what I say."

In order to keep my ego in check, I've been reading other runners' accounts of their first marathons, what Wikipedia has to say about "The Wall" (this is not a Pink Floyd reference), and repeating this over and over to myself: Respect the distance.

For the most part, if you train properly, you can feel pretty confident of completing your goal at the smaller distances. Even in the half-marathon, I've found you can make your body do most anything for 13 miles. But I'm learning quickly that anything over 20 miles and it starts to get dicey - fast. And I have to say, that's really awesome, since 20 miles is the farthest I've gone in training runs.

From Uncle Wiki:
Carbohydrates that a person eats are converted by the liver and muscles into glycogen for storage. Glycogen burns quickly to provide quick energy. Runners can store about 2,000 kcal worth of glycogen in their bodies, enough for about 18-20 miles of running. When glycogen runs low, the body must then burn stored fat for energy, which does not burn as readily. When this happens, the runner will experience dramatic fatigue. This phenomenon is called "hitting the wall."

Um, GULP. I'm not a scientist, but I am a thinker. And in the past few days, I've thought enough about it to be scared. Now don't fret too much, just yet. Luckily, we have these awesome little things called PowerGels. In real world to a real person, they're fairly gross. If you poured a LOT of salt into a small amount of vanilla pudding... yeah, it kinda tastes like that. But in running world, in a sort of sick and twisted way, I crave them. I have one floating around in my purse right now, and at odd times during the day when I've seen it, I've been tempted to eat it right then. (I have not, because at a buck a pack, those things are like little packets of golden goo.) So, at least I have that strange obsession going for me, but you can only carry and eat so many during the marathon. Like most anything, too much of a good thing becomes, er, not a good thing anymore.

So PowerGels or not, I'm fully aware that 26.2 miles allows for a lot of things to potentially go wrong. How about that whole unchartered territory thing for one? I've done three 20 mile training runs. If it weren't for the many people who have done this before me... let's say I was making this up as I went along (thank goodness I'm not), I would never guess that was enough. Surely I need to do the full distance - or a lot closer to it - before I attempt the race, right? Not so, people/experts/the internet tell me. Yet I find it awfully suspicious and unnerving that my glycogen levels are planning on jumping ship on me just about the time I cross the 20 mile marker and into the great unknown. In training you do 20 and you feel great about yourself. Before any levels can crash, you're already stuffing homemade muffins into your mouth.

"I am super woman!" you think.
"Um, are you sure I don't need to run any farther now?" you ask, bits of muffin flying off your lips.
"Yes, we're sure," they smile devilishly, rubbing their sinewy little runners' hands together.

Then when I crash and burn in the real race, they will all laugh uproariously and point their fingers at me.

How did I sign up for this? I think, I think maybe someone is playing a joke on me.