Last week I was prepping all week to run The Austin Marathon. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy or fast but I just wanted to run it. I kept referring to the weekend as a “shit show” but I was really excited for it. As excited that I was to run that marathon, I knew I probably shouldn’t. It nagged at me all week which made me really think about the situation.
Running the marathons is fun and I love to do it. But it is incredibly taxing on the body and probably not something I need to do every weekend. I don’t want to get to a point where I can’t do what I want because I’m injured. It’s really about thinking smart.
At the end of the day, I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. We all know that I can run a marathon. I know I can run a marathon faster than when I first started. I’m positive that I could run a marathon much faster than what I do right now if I didn’t run a marathon every weekend or every other weekend.
Yesterday in the middle of The Austin Marathon, I made a smart decision to switch to the half. I won’t sit here and tell you I wasn’t extremely beat up about changing my mind, but I know in my head it was the right thing to do. I have a marathon this weekend that I am looking forward to an I want to be able to enjoy it. I just had a feeling running the marathon yesterday wouldn’t have turned out well for me this weekend.
I will be smarter about the marathons I do from here on out. But a cute medal will definitely change my mind in the marathon direction. I can’t lie about that. I still have a couple more marathons on list in the new few weeks but I’ll only have 2 more in April and May after that which I’m really looking forward to both of those too.
The lesson here is: you have to remember you only have one body and you have to take care of it. Don’t make the mistake of misusing your body or taking it for granted. If you take care of it, it will take care of you.
This goes with anything though. Eating right and being active are the two simplest ways of taking care of your body. There are so many things that could go wrong that are out of control that could harm us everyday, so why not take care of the things we can control, right?
