Six weeks until the Brighton Marathon, and I am asking myself this morning, can I actually do it? An 18km run first thing this morning (see http://tribesports.com/users/stevef1/training_sessions/165368) was good, apart from the last 5-6km uphill slog. And I had hoped to do over 20km, but knew by the 15km mark that this was a pipe dream. It was in part down to that last 5km almost all uphill, and a fast middle 4km when meeting up with some running friends we did a short-ish circuit at faster than my usual pace, so I did wear myself out.
Nevertheless here I am at six weeks out from the big day, and I can manage a half marathon, but not much more before my legs start to give out. Six weeks to get my body up to hacking it all the way around a full 26.2 miles. At this stage, I know I would struggle to complete that distance, and I have been training hard,
But a lot can change in six weeks. And it is now that I begin to understand what so many marathon runners that have gone before me have discovered. 90% of the struggle is mental. If you don't believe you can do it, you never will. If you believe, with work, with effort, with pain, that you will make it then you have a more than fighting chance of finishing. Finishing well, that's down to the training and how your body is coping on the day, but finishing at all is mostly in the mind.
Time for some mental calisthenics!
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