Thirteen weeks 'til the 113th Boston Marathon. Maybe that seems a far ways off for someone who's never trained for a marathon, but I can feel it's presence grow every single day. The power of the event is such that I can feel it enter my skin, I can taste it in my mouth, both humbling me and encouraging me to make every moment of training count. And that includes moments when I'm not running too, since recovery and having a solid core is so crucial to running your best.
Which brings me to a topic I could use some input on. Boston is April 20th. It's an event with such great honor and prestige that I naturally want to give it my all. Some of the top runners in the world will be running Boston including US Olympian, Ryan Hall. However, less than three weeks after that is the Journey's Marathon, a small but challenging marathon in Eagle River only about 10 miles from where I live. Last year's Journey's was my first marathon, where I placed fifth overall. With more training and experience now under my belt, I feel that I have the potential to be competitive for the top spot at Journey's. No matter how I decide to run them, I intend to run both marathons.
The problem is that if I run Boston all out, will I have enough left to be competitive at Journey's? If I treat Boston as a training run in order to gear up for Journey's, does that make Boston a waste of time and $ and dishonor the great tradition there? If I treat Journey's as a long easy run, will I be left wondering how well I could have placed there?
Can I have my cake and eat it too?
Most research I've done on back to back marathons suggest picking one event as the top priority and treating the other as a training or "fun run." On his very well researched site, Jim2, suggests that it is possible to successfully run both marathons all out. But he is the only person I've come across who suggests this is an okay thing.
Maybe it will come down to factors such as the weather and how I feel that day, but my inclination has been to either try to make Boston a training run and prioritize Journey's, or to give it all at Boston and hope I can recover in time to compete at Journey's.
But first I'd like to hear what you folks in cyberspace think so let me know!
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