I am not alone!

As my marathon quickly approaches (12 days from today) I've been mentally exhausted and physically beat up. I'll never forget the feeling that I had last friday during my 23K run where I stopped running with about 5K left and asked myself what I was doing this for.
After talking this over with a few of my closest friends, all of whom are amazing runners, I now realize that these feelings are common. I was reminded today that the kind of training that I've done is something that most runners don't do. When I told Ken about my run from last week it was funny to hear him say that he's gone through the same things at times. He also pointed out that now my body will be feeling different pains (knee, foot, ankle etc.) which is also something that I've started to experience lately. Being still very new to running, I need all the education I can get. The difference betweeen my running last year and this year is that I'm finally starting to run smarter than ever before. I almost feel like a kid who hangs on every word and I'm improving my running as a result. I still find it funny how some people look up to me as a runner since I am still so new to this sport and have so much to learn. I never want to lose my passion for running, though, and I feel that part of my responsibility is to let people know how great running is for the mind, body and soul. I know that I have convinced many of my clients to get into running and most of them have told me that they enjoy it as well.

Today I did my last track work (6 sets of 400M repeats) and I'm looking forward to running tomorrow with a good friend. I haven't run with her in months, it seems, and have missed her company.
As my mileage starts to decrease I will be challenged mentally to not push myself too much. I'm going to take the same strategy that worked for me during my last marathon in December. I was forced to do nothing for 3 days prior to that marathon and that's the tactic that I'm going to employ this time around. For someone who just has to exercise daily, this will be something that will be very hard for me to do but I know that I will benefit from the rest.