Well week 7 is in the books. As Jack Fultz (winner of the 1976 Boston Marathon and training consultant to the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team) would tell us when we were waiting for the Boston Marathon to start, "the hay is in the barn". “The hay is in the barn” meant that we were ready for the race; practice runs and our taper were complete and it was time to run our best. My barn is not quite full yet. But I am definitely shoveling the hay into it each week. The time seems to be moving faster as the marathon race date approaches.
It is hard to believe that 7 weeks have already passed since I started training for the NYC Marathon.
It is amazing to me as I get older how time seems to pass so much faster than when I was a kid. I am not sure that I can explain why this seems to be the case. When I was a kid I couldn't wait to grow up and be an adult. I figured that once I could make my own rules, eat what I want, stay up late etc. that life would be grand. Now I am sure you know that that was just a child's fantasy. But it made me realize that time seemed to be going slowly then because of my anticipation of the future. For example, waiting to be old enough to drive seemed excruciatingly far into the future when I was 10. Now I look back on that event and can't believe it was actually 40 years ago.
I guess the reason that time seems to be passing so much faster today than in my childhood is because of the reflection backwards in time. I feel so blessed to have so many happy events to look back on. They feel like they happened yesterday because the memories I have are still so vivid. It isn't until I think about when they happened that I start to see how fast the calendar continues to rapidly proceed ahead. I will be turning 55 in 12 days. Despite knowing my chronological age, I don't feel old. In my mind, I still am in my 20s. It's only when I look in the mirror that I see that I am not the young buck I once was.
In my running life I always have something on the horizon that I am training for whether it is a 5K, 10K, Half or Full Marathon or even an Adventure Relay. As you can imagine, these are important to me and I await their arrival with much anticipation. They seem to come sooner than I feel I am ready for them. But more importantly when they are over, it seems like they happened in a blink of an eye. I believe that this is due to the fact that I am so focused daily on each training run that I don't notice the passage of time. It isn't until I look back at the schedule that I realize how far time has moved forward.
I am a firm believer that time flies when you are having fun. I am always having fun when I am running. It is because I am happily engaged in the activity I love that I am focused only on the fun I am experiencing out there on the road. Therefore, I really don’t have time to think about the passage of time. Instead, I am focused more on just enjoying the moment while it lasts. Then I as I reflect back on races and many other life experiences, I smile at having had the experience no matter whether it was good or bad.
As Haruki Murakami (author of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running) wrote in Kafka on the Stone, “No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.” I love that my memories can never be rubbed away.
Aug. 15 – 6.20 miles (1:07:08, 10:50 pace) - Hill Repeats
Aug. 16 – 6.20 miles (57:43, 9:19 pace) - Speed Work
Aug. 18 – 7.20 miles (1:01:07, 8:29 pace) - Tempo Run
Aug. 19 – 6.20 miles (55:56, 9:01 pace)
Aug. 20 – 12.20 miles (1:57:31, 9:38 pace)
Aug. 21 – 14.20 miles (2:22:22, 10:01 pace)
Total Miles: 52.2 miles
2016 Total Miles: 1,264.7 miles
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