Marathon wisdom

Regular blog raders already know this, but I'm ok with repeating myself from time to time. And I'm pretty darn proud. I ran 20 miles on Saturday. Yeah!

The big question now is, "What next?"

My friend Alan, finisher of four marathons, provided great perspective in an e-mail. I share an excerpt:

More long runs and better conditioning obviously makes a marathon go faster, but for a first marathon it's important to keep perspective. Your main goal is finishing. Now that you've done a 20-mile training run, you can be confident you'll finish under race conditions, when you have more adrenaline and more support. If you were going for a personal record, now you'd be trying to make those long-run times faster. But you're not - because whatever time you finish in is your personal record.

So from here on out, your priority is health, grasshopper. Maintain what you've got, don't overtrain, and stay healthy.

I wish I could have thought of a snappy comeback to the grasshopper line, but hey, part of this whole marathon thing is humility. I know I'm not going to be the fastest guy out there. But my goal is to run the marathon and I know now that I ought to be able to finish it.

I've got to continue training and continue praying, but the 20-mile run is a major accomplishment and a major step along the way.