feel the fear... and blog it anyway

There's a great book I have on my shelf called "Feel the fear...and do it anyway". I think I picked it up at a used bookstore in Scotland, or borrowed it off a friend's shelf there, I can't remember anymore. They don't really do self help books there, so this one was virtually unused when I acquired it.

Oddly, I've never fully read the book, I think I've cherry-picked a couple of chapters. I love the title. For me, the title is enough of a reminder of the point of the book that I don't need to read it. I get it. I see that title staring at me on the shelf when I need it, when I'm there and I need a reminder.

I'm there right now, actually. I'm feeling the fear.

I'm signed up for my first 50K run, and it's breathing down my neck. I can practically hear it coming. The race is this Saturday. This is a big deal.

Training for this thing has temporarily sucked the fun right out of training. I've been running, running and running. I often joke that my spouse trains for triathlon by running, running, and running (since he dislikes the bike and the swim, but loves to run), and for the past few months, that's been me too. To be fair, I've done some swimming and biking to break up the running, but my mileage on Beginner Triathlete, where there's the little bar graph off to the side, shows large blocks of single color (running) with smaller other-colored blocks of other stuff. It's as if the cycling and swimming have become some sort of a hobby. It is the off season, so that's fair. It's OK for my overall mileage to be low. I'm OK with that.

Anyway. Back to my whining.

I like running (which is good - because I'm about to do a whole lot of it at once) but I've never run like this before. Coach has been throwing me two-a-days, and long runs on back to back days. The winter weather here has been iffy at times, and sometimes I throw a small princess-like tantrum and don't want to run in the cold. As a result, some of my two-a-days have been outside morning followed by treadmill evening. I have found that doing the second run of the day on a dreadmill, when I'm already physically taxed from running earlier, can be quite suck-tastic.

I've been running a whole bunch lately, and even so, I feel like I'm walking into this thing a bit undertrained. So I am resigned to having a long day outside. Long. And it's going to hurt. The more I look at the course profile, and listen carefully to my friends who've done it before, the more I realize this thing is serious. That "rocky terrain" thing? They're not kidding. It will be long, it will be difficult. The runs I've done on similar terrain here have been fantastically difficult - I know I'm facing slow miles.

so I'm worried. as I should be. I've convinced myself that it's just a marathon with a 10K tacked on the end, but somehow that doesn't help.

Perhaps it's the combination of some of the suck-tastic runs of late combined with the fact that I know how I will feel doing even half of this hard thing is filling me with a sense of dread.

It didn't help when my brand new hydration pack (which I heart) sprung a leak last Sunday. Brand new - I've only had this thing for a couple of months, and it's awesome. But leaking? That is Not. On. Nathan: you are on notice!

It also didn't help when the shoe that I've been running in for the past 2 years - the one that I've finally trusted to get through my ITB issues, has been discontinued - GONE! How could they? - forcing me to find a new shoe to try out to bring for this race.

And I've been panicking about, oh a bajillion other little details - like what to pack, nutritional needs, the weather, what to wear, will it rain (apparently that's not out of the question), what to leave in the drop bag, what will I do if my ITB crops up (it probably will).

Spouse, who is also doing the 50K, has become a gear whore for this race as well. Normally, he's Mr. Minimalist. Where I might wear a couple layers to go outside, he scoffs and says "bah. Not that cold" and dons shorts and short sleeves. While he's not the pre-race worry-wart I am, he is similarly concerned about conditions - and has quietly stocked up on additional gear, like rain jackets and better trail shoes. His strongly worded concerns have only focussed my anxiety: If my all-powerful all-running spouse is worried, I definitely need to pay attention.

I've also tried to de-wuss myself over the last couple of weeks and HTFU on the weather thing. The weather is such an unknown - so I've forced myself outside when it's on the schedule: wind, rain, snow, whatever, I went out and faced it. It was never as sucky as I thought it would be.

I have, by necessity, formed a plan. I have to stop hyperpventilating and start going - me and my paper bag have finally parted ways. I've had to re-organize my head and get into this thing. People do these things all the time, they have fun, they enjoy it.

What will I do?

I'll run the runnable parts.
I'll be significantly lower than I am now, so I'll enjoy all that extra oxygen.
I'll power hike the hills
I'll eat
I'll run
I'll walk
I'll run some more
I'll go
I'll do

I'll feel the fear. And I'll run anyway.