One Week until Walt Disney World Marathon!

My apologies for a quiet blog.  It has been a defeating fall and I haven't had much to say, but I just realized this Marathon is the reason I started these musings in the first place so I thought I had better share my progress!  I am officially one week away from running my first (and last) full marathon and am experiencing a variety of emotions.  I think I am mildly excited that it is nearly here.  If nothing else, I am very excited that it is almost over!  I am mostly terrified though, not of the pain and the fatigue, but that for some reason I will be pulled from the course and not finish.  I know for a fact that I will not quit, and as long as I'm conscious, will fight tooth and nail with anyone trying to remove me!  As I told a friend, if I don't finish, it better be because I am stone cold dead!

I have been suffering through an SI joint problem that has caused me a lot of pain and required me to slow my pace quite a bit.  Fortunately, thanks to the physiotherapist and chiropractor, I have been feeling a lot better in the last few weeks and am running with only minor pain.  It was looking pretty bleak for a while as I walked with a dramatic limp, and had a hard time getting in and out of the vehicle, and even rolling over in bed.  But I managed to keep getting my mileage in, albeit slow, and I have to be proud of myself that I never missed a training "limp" despite the mental and physical pain. By the time I leave for Walt Disney World on Thursday, I will have logged 600 miles preparing for this race.

When I signed up for the biggest RunDisney race of the year, I had no intentions of taking the kids along.  However, the day I ran my first 15 miler (at the time the longest distance I had ever run), I had an epiphany:  that this is a really big achievement and I was doing it once, and once only, so the kids should be there to see me finish.  And like every crazy thing that I do, I hope the memory of it would be inspiring to them at some point in their lives.  So, on Boxing Day, we surprised them with the news that they would be coming along to cheer me on, and they would be running their very own race ,"The Mickey Mile", on Saturday afternoon.  We are staying at the Polynesian Village Resort and the Marathon course will take me by the Polynesian twice for a good view for the family.  Then they are just a monorail ride away from the finish line at EPCOT so it should work really well.

I cannot say enough about the people in the running community who have given me advice.  I hope you know who you are!!  Talking to these experienced runners is so valuable (and I hope that something I have to say will help another runner along some day).  This fall, I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Queen City Marathon crew, and Darwin Weimer, in particular, gave me some amazing insight into the mental game of this sport.  He made me aware of, and this fall I paid close attention to, the crazy things our minds will try and tell us to stop ourselves from running.  On my 26.2 miler the week before Christmas, I came up with the analogy of having an angel and a devil on my shoulder, kind of like Fred Flintstone would have from time to time.  The devil voice would say, "You know you should just walk.  You've got plenty of time.  Your knee is starting to hurt.  You don't want to damage it before the real race.  Just walk it out."  But what I learned is, that if you listen for the angel voice (and sometimes it's hard to hear when you're really tired), it might say "You are doing great!  You are making good time.  Forget about that knee and look at that rebar and insulation.  Doesn't it look like Cinderella's Castle?"  Every once in a while, I will imagine our amazing RunDisney volunteers lining the edge of the road, waving at me with giant Mickey Mouse hands, and the odd time, when no one is looking, I might even wave back!

I will be posting lots from Florida and will do a weekend recap when we get home!  Please keep me in your thoughts (and prayers if you are so inclined) that we will have a safe trip and I will have a successful race on Sunday morning.  At the end of it, I just need to know I gave it all I had, and I hope I end up with a time that is gratifying enough that I won't feel compelled to do it again!  Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust.