Running Update:

9/17/2014	7.6 mi	1:14:20
9/19/2014	7.6 mi	1:10:20
9/21/2014	20.4 mi	3:28:20
9/24/2014	7.5 mi	1:11:35
9/26/2014	5.0 mi	45:00

     The Hartford Marathon is two weeks from tomorrow!  Did my longest run of the season last weekend, so I’m in taper mode now (though still have 14 miles to run this weekend…)

     Hartford will be marathon #7 for me.  At this point in training usually I do find a little bit of dread creeping in to my psyche.  Marathons hurt!  And recently that got my Ob-Gyn brain thinking:  running a marathon is not unlike childbirth.  Months of preparation, physical challenges, dietary restrictions and other deprivations leading up to a single life-changing event.  (Not to mention the similarities in the post-event recovery:  sore muscles, abrasions in unpleasant places, days before you can walk normally…)

     Like giving birth, running a marathon seems worse the second (and every subsequent) time around because you know what’s coming.  In preparing for your first marathon (or childbirth) you are blissfully ignorant.  Yes, you have done your homework and heard the horror stories, but you still lack first-hand knowledge of the mental and physical anguish involved.  Then, just like after the birth of a child, you are on an emotional high after the first marathon, and somehow, after the physical hurts have healed, the memory of the pain fades and you only remember the triumphant end result.  And in a few months you’ve forgotten all about the misery and sign up for another one.

     For your second (and every subsequent) marathon (birth), you do well through the first few months of preparation.  The event itself seems distant.  As the last few weeks of training (or to the last few weeks before your due date) approach it suddenly hits you—you have to run an actual marathon (push an actual baby out) again.  You think, “Oh yeah.  Dang!  I forgot about that part.  Why did I sign up for this?” 

     And just like birthing babies, with every year you age marathoning  gets harder and harder.  “AMA”, the abbreviation of the obstetrician’s euphemistic “advanced maternal age”, could easily stand for “advanced marathon age”.

     Food for thought!

Jane/NF Update:

     Busy week for Jane.  She had her monthly check up with pediatrician (normal), monthly blood work (mostly normal), and 6-month hearing test at Yale (mostly normal).  We return to NIH in two weeks (two days after the marathon!) for a quick visit—just physical exam and blood work.  It won’t be until our next big trip to NIH in December that Jane will have an eye exam, EKG, echocardiogram, and MRI.