The hard part is over.

The greatest part about training for a marathon? Finishing training for a marathon! And you finish a lot sooner than you might think: three weeks before the actual race.

I've been preparing for the Chicago Marathon on October 11th this year, and I just put in my last brutal workout yesterday. From here on out, it's all easy maintenance running and washing your hands a bunch so that you don't get a cold before race day. ;) That's part of the attraction of the sport, at least for me. It's such a slow-adaptive process that the benefits of training takes weeks to pay off. Actually, I take that back. SOME of the benefits of training take weeks to pay off. Some of the benefits of marathon training actually take months and years to pay off! I've said it before, but it really can't be stressed enough: consistent commitment over time will give you improvements you never thought possible.

On the other hand, now that marathon training is mostly over, things get a little boring. When you go from running one, two or three hours a day to thirty, forty or fifty minutes, you find that you have a lot of free time on your hands. And since most marathoners are the active, type-A personalities, it can be pretty hard to sit still and let your body rest for three whole weeks to get ready for the big show. My two cents: take this time to REST. It's not a good time to start a new cross-training regimen, or try rock-climbing or whatever else. Why risk injury and trashing the past fifteen weeks of training? Not to mention the six months of base work you might have put in.

If you're going to start a new hobby, try one of mine: knitting, reading, drinking coffee or starting a blog. They're much less injury-prone. ;~)