Pre-race jitters

As I was finishing my final run before the marathon, a short 3 miles to Cleveland Circle and back, I started to think "at this time, 48 hours from now, I will not have even reached Coolidge Corner yet, and I will have been running for 2 hours and fifteen minutes". Wow, that's soon!

Regardless of how many marathons I have run, I always get the pre-race jitters. For example, when I ran my last marathon (Philadelphia) with my old roommate Mo she was laughing at how ridiculous I was acting when it was my second marathon in three weeks and it was her first EVER. I couldn't decide what to wear - pants...no, skirt...no, pants..! then two minutes before dropping off our bags I had to duck behind a truck to take off my pants and wear my skirt. Oh, and yes, Mo had to listen to me debate about whether or not that was a good choice as we waited in line at the Porto potties, where I was also kind of freaking out about the close proximity to start time and the long long line... I like to think I was distracting her from allowing herself to be nervous for her first marathon...

I think my nerves pop up because I all of a sudden realize that 26.2 miles is actually a really LONG run. Another marathon experience that helped me to understand that factor was when Fred and I ran the Sugarloaf marathon together. We were staying at a hotel at the 10 mile mark of the marathon, and the morning of we were supposed to drive to the finish line and take buses out to the start of the course. We thought we had calculated enough time to get up, changed, fed and in the car to the start line... but we kind of forgot that 16 miles on windy roads in Maine does not take 10 minutes... it can take up to 30 minutes! I have never seen Fred drive so fast in my life. We were flying around corners in order to make it to the buses on time, all because we didn't realize how far 16 miles really was - and we were about to run 10 more than that!

Anyhow, I guess this is about the time I realize that the marathon is a huge accomplishment. It is a long run and all of us have put many hours, dollars, and thought into the months, weeks and days leading up to Monday. I suppose the nerves are completely understandable.