Thirty Days! The Countdown's Started

I just received an email telling me that there's only a month till marathon day.

What?!! How did that sneak up so quickly? I'm not ready yet.

But luckily I don't have to be ready yet. I've got another 30 days before I really have to be ready. 30 more days to get those last two 37k runs ticked off. 30 days to practice my in-race nutrition. 30 days to finalise my wardrobe options. 30 days to work out the best way to chafe-proof myself. 30 days to get my head in the right space.

Getting my head in the right space is probably the hardest part of this exercise. There's just too many thoughts that are going on in there and not all of them are positive. The most insistent one is the one that keeps reminding me about how my body's let me down in the past when I've pushed too hard. And that's the one that freaks me out when I get a bit tired. But the rational voice in my head (the quieter one that can hardly be heard with all the shouting that the freaked-out voice does) keeps reminding me that you're actually supposed to be feeling tired towards the end of marathon training and if you're not then you're probably not putting in enough kilometres.

Thursday morning the freaked-out voice convinced me to turn my alarm off and miss the scheduled 16k run so I could be rested for the big run on Saturday. Then it made me feel guilty all day telling me that I'd really suffer on the marathon because I'd skipped the run. Man that voice is fickle!

The rational voice kept telling me that one missed run wouldn't matter in the scheme of things and if I wasn't too tired at the end of the day I could go for a shorter run then. And amazingly I listened to that rational voice and went for an 8k run which turned into an 11k.

And I'm really glad that I went because I learned some really interesting things on that run. Running in the late afternoon is way more dangerous than running first thing in the morning. I almost got wiped out three times on the run - by a bike that was coming around a blind corner on the wrong side of the footpath, by a dog-walking woman who wasn't looking where she was going and by a computer-wielding student who was checking his emails or updating his Facebook status while he was walking along.

The other thing I learnt was if you bake cookies before you run your hands may still smell of the cookie dough when you wipe the sweat from under your nose and that smell is as effective in improving performance as taking a gel. Or maybe the reminder that there were fresh cookies cooling on the bench in my kitchen was the real performance-enhancer.

Cookie dough with the lot - white chocolate, dark chocolate, peanut M&Ms, peanuts and raspberry lollies.

I've had some really nice distractions this week to help me from obsessing about Melbourne too much. The first was a surprise text from a friend who was going to be in Brisbane and would I like to catch up? Absolutely!

And the second was from a blogger that I know only virtually who also was going to be in Brisbane and would I like to meet for a coffee? Years ago I would have been too shy and uncomfortable and would have made some excuse as to why I couldn't. I'm not sure if it's because of running or blogging or just because I'm older and grown out of a lot of the shyness (finally) but I said yes.

It's funny how you can meet with someone for the first time and feel like they're an old friend. How you can know you're going to get along even before you've set eyes on them. And that's how it was with Deb. We had a great couple of hours chatting. And I'm really hoping that no one overheard some of the TMI stories - cause that's what we over-sharers like to talk most about.

I obviously need a little more practice in the art of taking selfies.

So really the best way that I'm going to get through the next thirty days is by taking it one run at a time, distracting myself by catching up with friends and by baking lots of cookies.