When it comes to marathons, you never know, but with fewer than six
weeks to go before the big day (Sunday, July 27, Barrington County, Nova
Scotia), so far, so good.
What I’ve come to know about running in marathons
(completing five) since I began this relatively crazy pursuit is that it
predictions are of little merit.
Suffice to say that for this race I’m pretty much on
schedule. Long runs? I did run for going onto three hours three weeks ago in
Barcelona, a city of beaches where I loped along the Mediterranean to a
development known for its giant solar panel, along a boardwalk with a slew of
nightspots and pier prix-fixe seafood restaurants out toward a patio-stone
esplanade (pretty much empty of runners except for the occasional clutch of
American ex-patriots who I swear exult “USA! USA! USA!” as they fist-pump along
in red, white and blue bandanas) and on to the spinnaker-shaped W Hotel, then
back to Olympic Park Village, named for the wondrously strange failed Catalan
utopia of Icaria, to Ciutadella Park where the minstrels and jugglers and
gymnastic partners and piñata-punishing children delights as the tourist with a
touch of class wend their way for hours in the waning sun.
Those seventeen miles went by relatively easily; it’s flat
in that part of Barcelona, like the Nova Scotian coastline I’m be running along
in six weeks, similar again to my next long run and walk, a minimum of
eighteen, out along the Hudson River Park in Manhattan planned for Thursday
(June 19); I’m training differently this time, with intermittent one-minute
walk breaks because at fifty-eight it seems advisable, especially given the
title of this blog – Running for Your Life – and I’d like to not repeat my
experience in Steamtown last October, which wasn’t a fun time. At the
sixteen-mile mark I started to break down and the next ten miles, well … Not
pretty. Am hoping this easier training regimen will make it better for me. But
as I said, you never know. You just gotta get out there, get the miles in ….
Next: Running for Your Life: Treadmill Time
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