Miles

I’m doing 20-25 miles a week as I do my pre-training for the Marine Corp Marathon in October and once I get into the heart of my training routine I’ll probably peak out somewhere close to 40 miles during certain weeks.  And to me, that’s a fair amount of running – and time…  And I started to think about other people that I’ve met or read about that do 30-40 miles per week just on a regular basis, then amp it up to 60+ for their marathon training. Some of these runners are running multiple times a day.  The question I have to ask is: do these people have a life outside of just running? Do they have jobs, errands to run, a house to take care of, have kids, a spouse, or friends?  You know… a life?  Do they go out for a beer on Friday or Saturday nights?

Perhaps it’s just me, but an hour’s run actually consumes more like 3 hours of my day if I take my pre and post run routines into consideration.  All told, those 20-25 miles take a reasonable, but very enjoyable, chunk out of my life.  So for those folks that are consistently doing 30-40 and more miles per week, either they run really, really fast or running is basically pretty much all they do.  And I’m pretty certain that when they are not running, they are cross-training…

So my point here I guess is that there are varying levels of running fanaticism. There’s the guys like me that want to run, like to run, and want to be better, but are constrained by the different priorities and pulls of a “life”.  And then there are those that live to run.  I have this image of those that live to run literally wearing running gear under their work clothes and then do the phone-booth Superman transformation (ok – they probably do it in a bathroom or perhaps their car).  Of course I’m assuming that they are actually working….  There was a story in Runners World about a guy who kind of had that way of life: as soon as 5:00 hit, he'd change clothes and be running down the road by 5:05 and then order pizza while running to be delivered to some corner so that he'd have something to eat for the run back to his car.  But guys like that are so not the norm.  C'mon man...

But nevertheless, I am hammering out my miles in the relentless effort to become more fit and physically capable of accomplishing a difficult goal.  I struggle with balancing training-time and other-things-I-need-to-do and I know that I'm not alone.  But in the end the personal reward is tremendous.  It’s something that I can’t describe to anyone and I’m sure that other runners feel the same.  And it’s more than just accomplishing something.  It’s almost like it’s an internal digestion and reaching for a certain “zen”, whatever the heck that is.  

I can’t wait for the MCM.  I’m excited and I hope that I am fit and can toe the starting line healthy!

176 days to go.