I'm just now realizing that I haven't posted anything here since Boston. Shame on me, I guess.
The New York City Marathon is just around the corner... by which I mean it starts in like 15 or 16 hours, depending on whether daylight savings time decides to change tonight (I have it on good authority that it might)
I'm feeling... nervous and uncertain. More than I have for any race in a very long time.
My training has not gone as well as I would have hoped... I've been kind of on the semi-injured list for most of the summer, with only the last month or so really starting to feel better. And I'm not sure how tomorrow is going to go.
Jean, one if my teammates, pointed out that the nerves are probably because I've been waiting for this race for a long time. And she's probably right. I have been.
I first applied to the NYC Marathon in 2009, through their drawing/lottery system. That's one of the ways to get here. I didn't get chosen that year. Or the next. Not in 2011 either...
But in 2011 at least I knew I'd get to run this race... In 2012. They used to have a "fourth time's a charm" rule, which has since been removed. But in 2012, I got in!
And I trained and got excited all that summer (my first training in the summer months in Austin... It was kind of an eye opener, or at least a pore opener). Then a week before the race, a storm came and trashed the place, and there was no marathon that year.
I made a decision then, that the next time I was going to try to do this race, I'd have to qualify for it. That's another way of getting here. No more lottery attempts. I'd just have to run fast enough somewhere else to get my entry. At that time, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that I sacristy could do it. But it happened! I qualified for last year's race! ...and it was going to be the day after Halloween, and my kiddos are still young enough that I wanted to be with them. So it was a no go for 2015.
You probably already guessed the punchline - none of the previous roadblocks stopped me this year. And so here I am, swiping out some long winded drivel on my phone about how long it's taken me to get here, and how nervous I am, and how excited I am too.
Heck yeah I'm excited! Eight years is a long time to build all that stuff up.
So what if the training wasn't optimal. My coach has a saying about that. She also told me halfway through the summer to not get frustrated... Get determined.
And so I'll go into tomorrow with all the determination I can muster, and whatever happens, I'm here in New York and I'm finally going to run this freaking race!