Inspiration Saturday: Marathon momentum

In case you were worried that I had silently stopped my marathon training, I'm happy to report that I have just completed Week 15 of my plan, which brings me to the halfway point.  It was a cut-back week, meaning that after running 7 miles last Saturday, I did only 5 today.  But my Wednesday runs have been bumped up from 3 to 4 miles, and next Saturday I'm jumping up to a 9-mile long run.  So moving swiftly along.

Except for one not-so-swift moment this morning when I tripped and fell within the first mile.  I have no idea what I tripped over, whether it was a seam in the slabs of the sidewalk (they weren't completely even) or just my own feet.  But before I knew it, I was slammed into the cement.  My hip and elbow on the left side seemed to take most of the fall, getting successfully scraped up.  I hit my knees a bit as well, but I had long pants on so they didn't scrape.

After a moment's shock, and a quick check that none of the technology I had secreted about my person had been smashed (pedometer, iPod Nano and iPhone), I got back up, started running again, and finished the rest of the designated mileage for the day.  I didn't ever seriously think about stopping.  Partly because I'm rule-follower, and I knew I needed to get the run in.  So I wasn't going to not do it.  Plus, since I was going to run, I didn't want to have to start all over again.  I may have only put in 3/4 of a mile, but darn it, I wasn't going to run that 3/4 of a mile again!

I'm all patched-up now and just hoping that there's nothing that will keep me from going into Week 16 okay.  Along with my war wounds, I'll be taking a little extra inspiration into training from the New York Marathon being run tomorrow.  I don't know if I'll ever get to run in one of these premiere, big city events, but it is inspiring to imagine running through the streets of New York, and to think of all the people from around the world gathering to do it themselves.

With a slightly less-impressive cityscape, the Austin Marathon recently posted a YouTube video of the race route I'll be talking in just over a hundred days.

There's something a little depressing about a six and a half minute video covering the route it will take me more like six hours to run.  But still, fun to visualize.

And I feel like I have to mention this hat pattern if I'm going to talk about inspiring running things:

Photo credit: Sandra Jäger

I can just about accept that I'll be able to run 26.2 miles if I keep following the training plan, but making this seems really ambitious!  I would need another 30-week program of color work patterns to build up to it.

One foot in front of the other, one step closer to the marathon.  For more inspiration, go to Woolen Diversions.