90% of it is Mental ~ the Other Half is Physical

I have been trying to adjust my attitude a little bit, for this upcoming marathon on Saturday.

This is the third marathon in 5 weeks, and the first two just about killed me. I'm a back-of-the-pack runner anyway, and there were several factors which added to the difficulty, so those two runs kicked some of the stuffing out of me. I thought about giving up on the idea, and not going to Wyoming this year, but I can't do that, because I've paid my registration fee, and I'm a cheapskate. So I've been looking toward this third piece of the summer triumvirate with the modest goal of survival. Just finish it. Punt. Get the medal and the T-shirt, and try to recover in time for Chicago.

But as Yogi Berra said, 90% of it is mental, and the other half is physical. (Did he really say that? He also said "I never said half of the things I said.")

So I'm trying to focus on things that will give me a boost in the mental department. My brain needs a kick in the pants.

It gave me a boost that I'm running a 5K with Mystery Runner (who is buying running shoes today!) ~ I registered for that today. I'm excited.

The renewal form for the 50-states marathon club has been sitting on my coffee table for months. Seeing Charlie and others at the last couple of marathons has reminded me that I need to send that in. (In fact, Charlie asked me to write up an article about my Big 5K in 2062, and that is why I blogged about it recently.) Why am I procrastinating?

Today, I thought it would give me a boost if I stopped procrastinating, and filled out the form.

So as I started filling out the form, I realized why I had been procrastinating. I don't feel worthy to be a member of this club. That is not rational, because everyone I've met from the club has been nothing but welcoming and supportive.

The renewal form asked me all these hard questions. About all my marathon accomplishments. I don't have a lot of amazing exploits, like some of these people do. Incredible feats of marathoning are usually described in terms of fast finishing times, or overcoming extraordinary hardships, or running hundreds of marathons and ultramarathons. I've only run 23, and no ultras, and never faster than 5:18, which is considered slow, by most standards, and I'm not even interested going faster than that. (When it looks like I might PR, I slow down on purpose. I don't want to raise the bar.)

One of the questions was "best medal?" And that reminded me that I haven't been carefully displaying my medals lately. I have a three-part folding decorator screen, and I attach the medals to the screen with wires, so that it's the first thing I see when I come in the door. It really looks pretty. The marathon medals are in the left and center upper panels. In the right-hand upper section, I have medals for my half-marathons and other races, including two age-group awards (a rare occurrence for me!)

It's not that I've been coming home and throwing them into a junk drawer, at least ~ I've been hanging them on the corner of the screen, and I had about six or seven of them hanging there, waiting to be taken off their ribbons, and displayed in their own little diamond on the panel.

So I took a few minutes to organize my medals today, and try to decide which one was the "best," so I could tell the 50 states club.

The first one that came to mind was the Georgia ING medal. It has a "spinny" center, which is cool, but it also has the orange (not peach) color, which makes it probably the most garish. So I guess I thought of that one because it screams the loudest and is fun to play with.



I looked really closely at the San Antonio medal, maybe for the first time. It is probably the most aesthetically pleasing. Classy.


The Paavo Nurmi is cool, with the cut-out space around the edges, but there is that loud orange again. The Crater Lake medal is the most lame ~ but that is appropriate, as I was pretty lame when I received it. And the gorgeous scenery of the marathon overpowers the unspectacularness of the medal. When people ask me my favorite marathon, Crater Lake comes immediately to mind, for the beauty of it. So I have to like the medal, even though it is kind of skimpy.


My daughter nominated the Leading Ladies' medal, because it was the only one that depicted a solo female runner. I found a couple that depicted a male and a female, and some others that were abstract enough that it could be interpreted to be either. But she pointed out that on all the other medals, if they showed one runner, it was a man (or a stylized abstraction), and they only showed a woman if they showed two runners, male and female.

(When I was a little girl, I noticed these things, too. "Male" is depicted as normative, and "female" is considered a secondary variation, or an auxiliary of the norm. It doesn't bother me as much any more, because I'm used to it. But maybe that is why the Leading Ladies' Marathon, which is an all-woman race, was so special.)


Some of the medals are colorful, and some are monochromatic, with an antique brass look. I kind of like the non-colorful ones ~ they are more elegant. But at the same time, I wouldn't want them all to be one color. It's nice to have the splash of color here and there. And I know from making quilts, sometimes it's the ugliest, brightest fabric that gives the quilt its sparkle. Some of the medals are big and substantial ~ others are lighter and smaller. This Estes Park one is particularly hefty.

I finally decided that I can't decide. I can't pick one and call it the "best medal." What I like about the medals, is the aggragate of them. It's like a quilt. It's not about the individual pieces ~ it's about the collection. I needed to do this today ~ it was good to gather and organize the medals so that I could see the totality of my accomplishment so far.

When I look at individual races, I don't see the glory of it. In some cases, I see a middle-aged woman struggling to get to the finish line before they close the course. It's not very pretty, and sometimes it's even a little embarrassing, when I look at it that way.

But when I look at my little wall of medals, I see it differently. Twenty-three marathons (and a goodly amount of other races) in three years! Not too shabby at all, especially for a person who's only been running for four years. It shows what (someone who thinks she's) a "non-athlete" can accomplish.

Even better, I see a bunch of open diamonds, where there is room for other medals. I counted the openings in the marathon panels ~ there is room for 54 marathon medals. It makes me want to go out there and get them, to finish the quilt.

I feel better now ~ I'm going for a run!