T-1 and inspiration

I'm not big on posting quotes, but I came across this on FB and thought it was worth sharing, particularly today, as I try to trust my training and ignite excitement about tomorrow. 

So here it is, the importance of training.  My blogging buddy Bella just posted this week about having hit 95 straight days of logging meals and being active.  It's all those little choices, those routine days, that get you ready for the big one. 

Without further ado, one of the only and longest quotes to ever post on this blog:

This is how it works: training is doing your homework. It's not exciting. More often than not it's tedious. There is certainly no glory in it. But you stick with it, over time, and incrementally through no specific session, your body changes. Your mind becomes calloused to effort. You stop thinking of running as difficult or interesting or magical. It just becomes what you do. It becomes a habit.

Workouts too become like this. Intervals, tempos, strides, hills. You go to the track, to the bottom of a hill, and your body finds the effort. You do your homework. That's training. Repetition--building deep habits, building a runner's body and a runner's mind. You do your homework, not obsessively, just regularly. Over time you grow to realize that the most important workout that you will do is the easy hour run. That's the run that makes everything else possible. You live like a clock.

After weeks of this, you will have a month of it. After months of it, you will have a year of it.

Then, after you have done this for maybe three or four years, you will wake up one morning in a hotel room at about 4:30am and do the things you have always done. You eat some instant oatmeal. Drink some Gatorade. Put on your shorts, socks, shoes, your watch. This time, though, instead of heading out alone for a solitary hour, you will head towards a big crowd of people. A few of them will be like you: they will have a lean, hungry look around their eyes, wooden legs. You will nod in their direction. Most of the rest will be distracted, talking among their friends, smiling like they are at the mall, unaware of the great and magical event that is about to take place.

You'll find your way to a tiny little space of solitude and wait anxiously, feeling the tang of adrenaline in your legs. You'll stand there and take a deep breath, like it's your last. An anthem will play. A gun will sound.

Then you will run.

- Jeff Edmonds (http://www.thelogicoflongdistance.blogspot.com/)

I didn't check the source on that, but thought it was worth sharing. 

Tomorrow that gun will sound. 

Here's hoping for a moving, challenging, and enjoyable 26.2 tomorrow.