Here’s where I delve deeper into the marathon process to try to figure out if I want to do this whole thing again. It’ll basically be a pros and cons list of the entire experience. Come along! It’ll be fun.

So a major item in the marathon pro column is that I LOVE a training plan. I like having someone smarter than me telling me what to do, and I really think I know a lot, so I don’t trust many people in this regard. (See how that was brag-y and self-deprecating at the same time? I’m calling that AWARENESS.) Now that the marathon is a week and a half in the rear-view, and I feel pretty much physically recovered, I want to start doing stuff again and feel at a loss. I’m trying to make up my own plan, but I can’t be smarter than myself. I think I have a decent routine for the next few weeks, but much beyond that, I would prefer a plan. Or something.

However, a con is obviously the amount of time marathon training takes up. It’s not only the time on the clock spent out on the road. It’s also the mental time and energy spent planning/strategizing/agonizing over all of it. The routes need to be planned as they get longer. Nutrition needs to be considered. Training clothing, race day clothing, anti-chafing methods, how to carry all of the stuff, how to get water during the long runs – these are a few of the things I thought about and discussed at length with people in my running circle. Also, I was supposed to be doing strength workouts, which I stopped doing after about week three, plus recovery things like yoga and foam rolling on top of it. And if a person doesn’t do the recovery stuff, they run the risk of injury and needing physical therapy, as I did, which adds a couple of hours per week of appointments (if you go), plus added time for exercises. It’s just so much time. But at the same time, I felt so healthy while I was in the midst of it, taking such good care of myself.

Something that’s both a pro and a con is the general level of emotion of the weekend itself. The days before and immediately after were pretty stressful and/or difficult. For example, I decided to go to the race expo the day before the marathon, which may have been a mistake. I also brought my small kids and normal-sized parents along. McCormick Place, where the expo was held, should have its own zip code. I had accidentally put the address for the wrong parking garage into Google Maps, still at McCormick Place mind you, but on the wrong side which was coincidentally on the wrong side of the highway, so I got embarrassingly lost to the point of yelling at everyone in the car and trying to rip the steering wheel off the steering column. I was a mess. Then we got in there and there were about a billion people inside, so trying to keep track of my own family was difficult, to say the least. I wasn’t handling stress well because my baseline anxiety level was about an eight out of ten going into the weekend, something I had failed to acknowledge for myself but everyone in my family recognized easily enough. I went to bed at 7:30pm the night before the race, and that was the best decision I made that entire day.

The next day, the alarm went off at 4:15am, and I was ready. I was calm and excited. I already talked about the amazing highs of the race itself in my recap post, but the whole morning, I was just smiling like a fool and felt happy to be there. I was almost in disbelief at having finally made it. The miles came and went, and then the race was over, and I did actually feel sad that it was done. I was also a little sad that I was going to be in a whole lot of pain in the coming days and had a bit of a “what have I just done to myself?” kind of feeling. There are more parallels to childbirth that I feel comfortable admitting, but instead of the hormones that allow a mother to forget the physical pain of labor, all of us who completed the race are considering going through it all again, contemplating our Why’s, and weighing our own pros and cons.

As you can see, the decision struggle is real. I’m still not sure what I’ll do, but I’ll let you know. I’m going to keep waffling over here for a while. The lessons I learned from the marathon about connection and hope will stay with me if I run the race again or not, but maybe it’s a lesson worth revisiting.