Steady Stating

This is me and Sarah's marathon training process:

1. One of us gets the "bright idea" that we should run our next marathon. It's important to remember who thought of it because you can blame her during long runs and times of tired "crisis."

2. The other person thinks it over for a few seconds and agrees.

3. As it's been going, Sarah studies every marathon training plan under the sun and devises her own well thought out plan. It's around Kara Goucher's mileage per week when she's not in training, but that doesn't really say anything. It's a killer.

4. We take one week at a time and figure out cool places to do our long runs. Her husband and my soon to be husband have to put up with our tears, complaints, gloating (it's fun to show off how much you are running, at least for me), and strange eating habits.

5. I ponder if Sarah is really running what we are supposed to, or running twice as much as she puts down to secretly out train herself. She tells me "Only run 80  minutes if it says 80" and that it's a recovery run. But I know she doesn't follow that herself. She is that hardcore/crazy.

6. I wonder if the marathon goal I set out for myself is achievable or crazy. Then I think about how I've been running for 6 years now and I can do this. I wonder if I will fall over if I run too fast. I wonder how you ever know what your goal pace should be because you never really know until mile 20 if you've started too fast.

7. We plan our "outfits" for the race and sometimes even for long runs like we are 7th graders planning our outfits for the first day of school.

8. We freak out during taper week, "Did we train hard enough," "Are we lazy," etc etc

9. We get up way too early and do our best on the day of the marathon.

10. Even before that happens, we are planning the next one.

I am thinking of this as I sit here resting after a really good steady state workout where I was 2 seconds faster than my zone. Was that a good idea? Did I overdo it? Am I not doing enough? I had planned on running an extra mile or so so I could hit 40 miles this week but I was pretty tuckered out after the speedy part. I guess that's ok. I should stop freaking myself out about it and just be glad that I got out there :)