Nineteen and a Half weeks until my first marathon. Giving
myself Four months to train, this means I am only one and a half weeks away
from my first week of real training for this race. Most people would take this
time to relax de-stress, unfortunately I am not. Having just graduated with my
bachelors degree, and with my lease of my apartment ending in the same month as
graduation, I have been racing around finding a new apartment back in New York
City (which takes about as much time and effort as a full time job, for any of
you who haven’t had to try to deal with NYC real estate before), looking for a
job, and moving all my things from upstate New York back into the city, all by
myself (that’s a lie, my girl Maggie helped with the move down THANK GOD for
her).
Week one back in the city, and I have set up an interview at
a bar in Hell’s Kitchen (“Clinton”), which will hopefully take the stress away
from my job hunt for what I like to refer to as my “Big Person Job”. Once I
have money coming in I can focus on the marathon training as well as job hunt. Looking
for a part time job, on top of marathon training will be significantly more
stressful since hospitality jobs require a lot more physical leg work then degree
requiring jobs do (typically).
As if I needed another stressor or distraction, I’m signing
up for a college level Spanish course. I have always wanted to become fluent
(or something the resembles the ability to speak and understand) in Spanish,
and I’m forcing myself to start that now.
So as I approach the eighteen week mark, the idea of not
being able to drink, and lots and lots and lots of running has allowed me to
drop my normal workout habits and eating habits, in order to indulge a little
before I start training. I know I should still be maintaining some level of
healthy eating and drinking, and I kind of am, but this last week before
training has presented me with lots of opportunities to misbehave, and I plan
on going out with a BANG! The week has actually planned itself and looks to be
pretty intense… Sunday, will be my going away party in Upstate New York, and
working with bar tenders, I,m sure that the alcohol will be FLOWING! Wednesday
night, I was invited to a fashion event/party which will be the death of my
self esteem and of course lead to pretty heavy drinking. Thursday Braking the
Cycle (
http://www.brakingthecycle.org/ ) is having an event at the Brooklyn Brewery, 2 dollar drafts
(common seriously how can I not?!) Oh! And if I sign up for this years ride the
beers are FREE! (already dreading the subway ride back to my apartment in
Manhattan….), and last but not least Friday night, my friend would like to take
me out for wine, lots of wine, and dinner as a celebration to be back in the
city. With all the festivities ahead of me, im sure by the time training comes
I will be more then ready to never drink again.
If my liver doesn’t give out over the upcoming week,
Training will start June 4th 2012, giving me exactly 18 weeks to
build up my cardiovascular endurance enough to run 26.2 miles. The goal is to finish
in under 4 hours. I’m sure that may sound high to a lot of people, but for my
first marathon, I just want to finish it.
So glasses up boys as I enter this up-coming week of heavy
pre-marathon training drinking (maybe not the best idea before training week,
but Im already ahead of the curve running-wise so a minor set back shouldn’t be
too bad).
