By now, you all know that in less than 2 months, I'll be running the New York City Marathon (obligatory fundraising plug here).  Running a marathon's no small feat, even if you are a slow runner with no natural talent like I am.  Getting READY to run a marathon is a whole different story.

By my calculations, my training plan will have me running somewhere in the neighborhood of 550 miles in the 24 weeks leading up to the race itself.  I've been very fortunate to this point to stay relatively healthy and mostly pain free.  Now, I'm definitely feeling the 15 miles that I put myself through yesterday, but overall, I'm not that much worse for the wear.

Now anyone that's a runner (or lives with a runner, or works with a runner, or talks to a runner for more than 3 minutes) can attest, someone training for a marathon or endurance event has to be a little bit nuts.  I mean, we go out, voluntarily, to run for hours on end, then feel the need to dissect every part of the run, talk about what hurts and what we should do differently next time, yet continue to run.  Run, whine productively discuss, repeat.

I found a spot-on video series over at YouTube that seems to perfectly document conversations before and after a run.  Seriously, this guy may have bugged our house for some of this material.  There's a very little bit of foul language, so proceed at your own risk, but if you do watch these (and fall into one of the aforementioned categories), don't tell me you're not laughing.

Pre-run:


Post-run:


I am a marathon runner.  I must run.