a happy “dns”

The marathon will have to wait.

I’m not injured! I’m really motivated! My relationship with running is in a really good place!

But I still decided today that not running my marathon this month is the right thing. It sucks. But wow is this the right choice. 

I had a training cycle of big growth. I didn’t get all of my runs in. I didn’t feel amazing on all of the runs I did do. I didn’t do strength every day and I didn’t prepare myself to run a marathon. I didn’t put myself in a position to be ready on race day. AND — my mental game has never been better. 

I really struggled with health stuff over the last few months. I wasn’t able to get my body to physically move the way I wanted it to, and my brain wasn’t an angel the whole time either. But even when in the moment things felt like they were spiraling, I learned a lot about reframing and moving forward. I read books on psychology, running mental habits, productivity, alcohol. I explored mindfulness, meditation, breath work. I practiced the way I talk to myself (running and not running), and learned to give myself grace. I reflected and explored the ways that coaching has impacted my own running, both positively and negatively, and worked with my therapist on how to use those findings to be better at both. I am dropping down from this marathon feeling better about running than I ever have.

When I look at the next few months of running, I’m excited. I’m excited to focus on consistency and not long builds. I’m excited to dive into strength training — I saw such huge benefits in my running and stability while I was being consistent with it. I’m excited to go into training for the NYC Marathon with a base that makes me feel confident and ready. And I know that trying to muscle out a marathon on this training would risk more harm than good. 

I don’t want to put my current relationship with running in jeopardy for a race that does’t define me. Because make no mistake, races don’t define us. I’m scared of receiving mean labels like “can’t finish a marathon” or “not meant for distance running,” but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one saying those things to myself and even I don’t believe them. My journey back to the marathon is going to be a long one, and not a linear one. It’s already been 5 years. But I know it’ll happen and I think I’m making the choices right now that will serve me and my running long term. And that’s what it’s about, right? Doing this and loving it forever?