Surfers Point Marathon; the marathon I didn’t train for.

I ran a marathon this past weekend that I didn’t train for.  Ok, YES, I know, I’ve been running  a crap-ton all summer.  So you’re probably wondering, how could this be defined as NOT training.  Yes, I’ve been training, I trained all summer for the Grizzly 50k, but I did not train for this marathon.  Same thing/close enough/ etc?  Right?  Perhaps, and I wondered going in if the two might be close enough.  After all, I’ve been working my tail off to get in pretty good shape this summer, and I think I AM in pretty good shape, in many ways, the best shape of my life.  So I thought an experiment was in order, I ran my PB (Personal-Best) marathon last fall, after training really hard for that marathon, and doing all the typical runs and volume building that a typical marathon training plan has in it.  I ended up having the flu on race day, I woke up with a fever, popped some drugs and ran the race anyway.  I felt pretty horrible during the race, but I survived, and ended with a pretty damn good time, one that I would have been happy with on a healthy day.  So this fall after the Grizzly 50k, I wondered to myself, could I run a marathon as fast, could I run faster?  I feel stronger, I know I’m stronger, but how will that translate in a race?  So what better to do than to put myself to the test, right? Right… (Note: it was a very painful test, next time I’m finding someone else to actually RUN the test 😉 )