Would we say it's too early to panic?

I’ve heard honesty is the best policy. Oh oh: so if I’m honest, up until now, my running “career” has been supported by several months of blundering and amateurish training. My Irish kin must be so proud – I do no speed work, no intensity training, no hill training, no scheduling, no special dietary requirements, and I entertain no sacrifices. Since I started, my training and race selection can be best described as random at best. I also continue to drink, eat and generally do whatever takes my interest; there has been many mornings and afternoons that I have used my ‘training runs’ as a means of combating a hangover! Come to think of it, I was out drinking the night before the race I won the bet – my last drink was a sambuca C/O a buddy wishing me luck in the race!

But marathons are a different animal – they’re hard, callous, gruelling and uncompromising. If you don’t respect them, they’ll spit you out with debilitating injuries that you’ll carry around like shrapnel scars after the war. These 26.2 miles are a graveyard of injuries, mental anguish, and marooned dreams. That’s if you make it that far – leading up to the race, one’s knees, ankles and hips are endlessly pounded into the ground for the months of necessary conditioning work.

They also say it takes 5 -10 years to develop a top marathoner who typically runs 100 to 150 miles a week! Without ever having run a marathon before, and with no sustained pedigree in any road races, I’m hoping to chase the heels of the elite; I’ve set my sights on a 2 hours and something marathon!

Let me put a few things in perspective – if I could sustain the pace that I ran my fastest ever 10 mile race in March of this year, then I’d finish a marathon in around 3 hours and 16 seconds! That’s the first unsettling fact. Now for another one, it’s so hard to run a marathon in around 3 hours, they’ve set it as the benchmark for entering the Boston Marathon (the original and most famous marathon in the world). Damn’it to hell, it’s beginning to dawn on me that this is a gargantuan task.

So no, I don’t think it’s too early to panic, quite the opposite actually.