Ain't preparing for a marathon such an emotional thing! There's just 11 days to go and to be quite honest, I'm finding it hard to simply relax. The excitement, the nervous tension and the anticipation is constantly there and I just wish I could just get the bloody race underway. I line up for probably 20 shorter races a year and rarely feel any nervousness until I wake up in the morning of the race. I guess I know that there's always another one next week or soon afterwards. But the marathon is different. I'm only doing 1 this year and this one is potentially my last.
I set my sights on the Fukuoka Marathon about 18 months ago, but I dreamed of running it nearly 30 years ago. As a kid I still remember Deek winning it back in the early 80's. I remember last year looking at the entry criteria for Fukuoka and back then sub 2:45 was required. At the time my PB was only 2:48 so I trained my backside off for the 2009 Melbourne Marathon hoping to achieve that time, in anticipation of getting a start this year. I ran 2:41:17 (gun time) and was feeling pretty confident of getting into this year's race. I'd already saved the Fukuoka Marathon website to my favourites and I checked it every month waiting for entries to open. I shit myself when entries did open and the qualifying time was reduced to 2:42. I was only 43 seconds under the entry requirement. Would that be enough? I put my entry in and waited for over a month before I heard anything from the organisors and when I did, I didn't exactly hear what I wanted to hear. I was told that my entry form was not signed off correctly by the appropriate person at Athletics Australia and I had a couple of days to get it done properly. This was at the same time as the Commonwealth Games and basically I had "bugger all" chance of making this happen. So I'd resigned myself to the fact that I'd missed out. I switched my entry in the Melbourne 1/2 Marathon to the full Marathon knowing full well that I hadn't prepared or tapered sufficiently for the race. To my surprise, the night before the race I discovered that I had been accepted into Fukuoka. It was too late to switch back to the 1/2 in Melbourne, so I decided that I would treat 30 km's of the Melbourne Marathon as a marathon pace effort and take a short cut and jog back. This actually worked out well as I helped pace a mate of mine who went on to run a PB of 2:39. So there's been plenty to get anxious about along the way this time.
Back to the present. The nervousness has been heightened today after putting in another crap run. I just felt terrible today. It was very muggy, my legs were tired, we were running over rolling hills on dirt and I basically had nothing. If it wasn't for the company of my 2 running buddies, Jim & Earl, I'd probably have just jogged the whole way. In all we covered 17.1 km's in 1:17:22. Pushed the last 4 km's at around 4:10 pace, working the hills and constantly focused on just getting the bloody run over and done with!
At times like these, I know I just need to listen to my body. No point trying too hard or overdoing my upcoming training efforts. I plan to ease back the pace and just back the training I've put in to date.
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