Taste of Exhaustion - Day 3

Ok, so I've never trained for endurance before (as if this isn't obvious). Most of the sports I've played have required as much energy as possible in the shortest amounts of time. With the exception of field hockey, but I was the goalie, so it was still short bursts of all my energy.

Basketball & track and field just require you to run through the pain for no longer than 15 minute intervals with breaks in between. But training for this marathon requires me to sweat, run, swim, strength train for 60 minutes of exhaustion and a little more than mild discomfort.

So I have found new and inventive ways to trick my body into doing what I need it to do even if it wanted to give up 5 minutes ago. Never has the phrase "mind over matter" been so true. Okay so it may sound really dumb, but I basically say one more minute or one more pull up or one more backward push-up. Funnily enough if I take it one at a time I can get through a lot.

I discovered this because after yesterday's "hot walk," I thought 60 minutes of swimming would be much easier than 30 minutes of walking under the sun.

Of course, after 30 minutes of swimming I realized that one thing that is required when you swim is consciousness and if you can't keep your head above water you need the ability to breathe underwater. Unfortunately, I didn't think I could remain conscious for another 30 minutes of swimming & I don't have gills so we (my training partner, Casimiro and I) had to figure out something else.

So we decided to do exercises in the pool, which I have done before using a stair in the deep end and the diving board. After 50 reverse push ups, 33 bicep curls, and 33 tricep extensions and treading water in between sets I thought I was gonna drown. But I figured were done until I looked up a the clock and noticed we still had 5 minutes left of the 60 minutes. So we said "fuck it" let's just swim.

Normally, I would have thought it's just five minutes, no big deal and gotten out of the pool. But then I thought about the 26.2 miles and I realized that every minute, every step, and every intake of air I take gets me one step closer to the finish line in San Francisco. Which takes me to my ultimate goal sprinting across the finish line. I know it sounds insane. But every race I have ever run, any time I have had to run or swim, or whatever requires me to cross a line or beat a time increment, I have pushed myself to go as fast as I can until I cross whatever line I need to and this can be no exception. Even if I only sprint the last 50 yards I want to cross that finish line going as fast as I can.

So today I learned that the taste of exhaustion is sweat, sometimes tears, muscle fatigue, desire, doing your personal best, and pushing yourself until every fiber of your being says no more and you ignore it and keep on going.

Until next time my faithful readers!

And until next time, I hope to see you as a donor on our LLS pages!

Roxanne Villaluz’s Team in Training Website

http://pages.teamintraining.org/cca/nikesf08/rvillaluz

Casimiro Llamas, Jr.’s Team in Training Website

http://pages.teamintraining.org/cca/nikesf08/cllamas