So you’ve wondered if you are ready to run a marathon and probably thought that you would never be able to. Well I’m going to tell you about how I knew I was ready to run my first marathon.

When I got to the point that I would even consider running my first marathon, I had already been running for about a year and a half. I had started running by doing a couch to 5K app and signed up for a 5K.   At the time that I signed up for the rodeo run 5K, I really felt that it was such a huge accomplishment, just running 3.1 miles!

In the summer of 2013, oh my gosh five years ago!!! I went out to eat to Olive Garden (I don’t know if the thought of Olive Garden makes me hungry or queasy now haha) with some friends that I had met in a mom group when my kids were babies. While we were there the subject of running came up. One of the girls at dinner said that she was signed up to run the Chevron Houston Marathon in January 2014. She encouraged me to sign up as well.   At first when she told me this I balked, and I thought, No way!!  There’s no way!!!  There’s no way I’m ready to run a full marathon!!! We are talking 26.2 miles here!

My friend reminded me that I had already run many 5K’s, some 10k’s , and a couple of half marathons, so in her mind I was completely ready to start marathon training.  “Yeahh, you’re right, maybe I could do it.  Well but isn’t it too bad that I already missed the lottery and registration is closed and all?”  Whew, I had gotten myself out of that one!  Then she told me, “Well you can sign up to fundraise for a charity and get your registration that way.”

“Oh.”  I said.   Well we continued eating and chatting and move onto other topics but the seed has been planted in my mind that maybe this was something I should look into. In fact, it was something that I couldn’t stop thinking about for the next several days. It was scary and exciting at the same time. I was thrilled at the idea of committing to something so big and the thought of achieving it was very enticing.   To counterbalance those positive reactions was the big and terrible “WHAT IF?????” feeling of “What if I can’t do it?!?  What if I fail?!?  What if I fail in front of everyone?!!?”

At this point I was no longer new to running and I already knew I had developed a passion for it. Thinking of the possibility of achieving the accomplishment of completing a full marathon was now so alluring I could not deny it any longer. I researched the charities that work with the Chevron Houston Marathon that week and settled on St. Jude’s as my “Run for a Reason” and committed to the fundraising and the training schedule.

I followed a marathon training schedule provided by another good friend I met in my former “mommy group” and ran all the miles that fall to prepare for the big day.  Committing to the amount of scheduled runs and weekly increasingly long “long run” each weekend was somewhat of an ordeal and there were many points where I felt like throwing in the towel and just winging it the day of the race.  But I didn’t!

I ended up completing my first marathon (more about the details in a later post) and had immense feeling of accomplishment, quickly followed by a “Wow, won’t need to do that again for a while!” feeling haha!

If you are wavering back and forth about whether you should commit to something big like running a marathon, odds are you are putting that much mental effort into the idea because you should just do it!

Have you run a marathon?  Are you considering it?!  I’d love to hear about what led you to running your first marathon!