Newport marathon, the pre-race report

This is what happens when training is going well:
The closer I get to race day, the more I hunker down. I put on my calm face. When someone asks, "how fast do you think you'll run?", I shrug, make non-committal noises. Because you never know what will happen on race day. The best training in the world can't make up for running like an idiot the first half, or 95 degree temperatures, or catching a bug from some jerk in your office who thinks they're too important to miss a day of work when they're sick, your cat dying the week before the race, food poisoning, whatever, you name it. I don't take anything for granted. The swagger I might possibly have been walking around with earlier in the season after nailing certain workouts and running prs in my tune up races slowly disappears. When it comes to marathons, I like my training to be blanketed with a healthy dose of fear and humility.

But, alas, that's not where I am right now.

This time, training has decidedly not been going well. In fact, this training cycle feels like it has been SIX YEARS long (please god, let it end!).
I have no awesome workouts to look back on for confidence building, just mediocre piled on top of barely passable piled on top of geez-am-I-in-the-wrong-sport??
My only tuneup race was a half marathon during which I tried and tried and tried and almost managed to run my full marathon pr pace. Almost.
In what was supposed to be the heart of my training cycle, I had a string of weeks containing at least one day where I came home from work and simply did not go running. What?!? Yes, you read that right. That thing I always do every day after work, that thing I like to do every day after work? I just didn't do it.

Why? you might be wondering.
Well, it's a long, uninteresting story that lucky for you I don't feel like telling.
You know the drill: injury taking forever to heal, low iron, blah blah blah. The whys are many and not that important anymore....  things just never clicked.

And, to add insult to injury: last week, when I finally had a string of several halfway decent workouts and was getting into a good headspace for the last few weeks of training...  I picked up a cold.
A freaking cold. Better than the norovirus, no doubt, but still, can a girl catch a break??

It probably goes without saying, but I'm not needing to cast a very wide net to get that healthy dose of fear and humility I was talking about earlier. Nope, my cup runneth over with fear and humility.

So, instead of my usual playing-it-down mental exercise, I find myself grasping for positives.
As my friend LT put it, it's time to talk myself up.

Ok, I may not have had 95 mile weeks, holy-cow-did-I-just-run-that? workouts and yawn-another pr-yawn races, but here is what did go well:

• I had the highest total mileage for a marathon training cycle I've ever had (almost 1500 miles)
• I ran long runs of at least 2 hours for 15 of the last 17 weeks
• the other two weekends? one I ran a half marathon, and the other was about an hour and 40 minutes running in 3-6 inches of snow (we don't own shovels in Portland because it only snows once every five years)
• just when I was ready to throw in the towel, I had 3 workouts in a row that said to me: hey, it's at least possible you can run within five minutes of your pr, and that's really not that bad is it?
• yesterday I ran my last real workout, and...  I ran it too fast. Wait, what?! There has not been a single incident of me running too fast in the past six months (not even to cross the street!), but today, there it was.
• and last but not least, these last few weeks I have had deep tissue massage. Definitely a splurge for me, but it seems like there is now at least a chance that my hamstrings and glutes won't be all tied up by mile 9. 

There you have it. That's the best I can muster.
This pep talk will probably not go down in history as inspiring armies off to war, but hey, I'm a realist. I don't believe in race day miracles, just running your fitness.

And the most important thing?
Today, for just a few minutes, I caught myself looking forward to the race. 

I'd almost forgotten what that felt like.