Personal Narrative: My Last Marathon

Not everyone has the same body constitution, weight or natural ability to run. To overdo it on the road could cause fatigue, lack of motivation and even injury. One size fits all running plans run the risk of pointing you in this direction. It certainly did for me. Just my luck…

After the half marathon debacle back in January, I just wanted to get back in the game and prove to myself that the last marathon I had run was not my swan song. There was also a little anger involved, directed towards myself and what I had done to bring me to this point. I chose to train for a marathon that I normally would not consider. I was born in Illinois- so the Chicago Marathon would make sense. But this one was in Orange County, California, an area where I …show more content…
You won’t be seeing them very much. Between work and running, that was pretty much all I was doing on this plan. I won’t go into the details of the mileage and intensity, you can look that all up, but as the weeks wore on, it felt like I was getting weaker, not stronger. Six days of pounding every week was taking its toll on me. My muscles just weren’t recovering. But the idea of the plan was accumulated fatigue. The idea of running on tired legs was supposed to prepare you for late in the marathon where that is exactly what you will be doing. But the marathon is just one day. This was day after day, and I was getting …show more content…
My right achilles was starting to hurt, but would usually be okay after a warm up. But the nagging pain would return later. I ran through it. Tape, ankle braces-you name it, and I tried it. But I kept going. That was until my left achilles started to give me problems. Now I had two weak, sore achilles tendons, and the marathon was six weeks away. Both achilles were now hurting while running and it was affecting my stride. I took a week off to see if it would help. It did not. Now the marathon was five weeks away and I had missed a