I’m having serious withdrawals from adventure racing.  For some unknown reason I got this stupid wonderful idea that I wanted to run a marathon.  Ana had already ran a full and together we had completed a half-marathon, but I felt that I needed to do a full marathon to mark it off the list.  Well, I can tell you that I am regretting that decision.  Marathon training consists of lots and lots of running…go figure.  We got this book, Four months to a 4-hour Marathon and we’ve been using it to train for the Space Coast Marathon

The book is fine, it describes a basic running program that will get you geared up for running a marathon.  But the training, my god, can it get more boring.  Hey big fella, I got a great way for you to spend your Saturdays, go run 13 miles, oh and next Saturday go run 15 miles and the next Saturday after that, well just go out and run 17 miles.  Good luck finding a 17 mile route that has anything interesting to look at.  Nope, just go pound the pavement in suburbia, check out your neighbors grass, and come back in 2.5 hours.  So far, our longest run has been 17 miles.  Ana did it on a treadmill.  I would rather poke myself in the eye with a flaming stick and wash it out with alcohol then spend 17 miles on a treadmill.  I don’t know how she did it.

All I can say is that I can’t wait for this to be over and to get back to adventure racing.  So far we’ve missed some really great races like the Pangea LighterKnot AR and the 7 Hills 3 Rivers AR.  We’ll also miss the Pangea Turkey Burn AR because it is the same weekend as our marathon.

I don’t know how the Ultrarunners do it.  50 miles, 100 miles of running/walking down a trail…not unless there’s a Krispy Kreme and Starbucks after every 5 miles.  Nope, I’ll take my adventure racing, where the course isn’t laid out for you, where there is running, mountain biking, canoeing, dodging alligators, battling water moccasins, getting lost, sometimes crying, always raining, always against the wind, always uphill, always an adventure.  You can keep that boring running shit for yourself.