a week for each mile

I knew, of course that my calculation of 26 weeks necessary to master 26 miles was simplistic, a plain mathematical extrapolation that had nothing to do with fact. First, walking was not enough, I had to run. Way over my capacity.

More critical was the nature of the marathon – one can’t train for it without knowing anything about exercise. My boyfriend pointed out there is such a book as Marathon for Dummies, and I took some solace from this bit of information. Imagine, they thought of people like me. In the meantime a friend has told me there is even Sex for Dummies. A scary proposition, as she called it. Well, I wasn’t about to point the finger. We all need some help, one way or another.

When I get to the running stage, I thought during the first couple of weeks, I will buy the book, and acquire some useful tips as to how a marathon is done, so I don’t injure myself. I did not want to invest in the book just yet – what if this impulse just fizzled out? Then I would be $20 dollars short and have a useless book on my hands. For the time being I was safe. I was just walking.

Which raised the issue of time. Even if I would increase my daily exercise with one mile each week, given my then pace of 3miles/hour (at best) it would take me almost nine hours to finish the damn thing, not to mention the preceding training. Okay, so I needed an alternative plan, some exponential growth, some expert guidance, some sort of quickening.

It was sure it could be done. I just didn’t know how. I would find out, along the way. I was doing a mile each day. I had another 25 miles ahead of me and whatever time this entailed to figure things out.

Other people had done it.