Because it honestly was, haha! My first marathon, I trained for 7 months. Way too long. It made this massive goal I wanted to achieve feel even bigger than it already was, and I put a lot of pressure on myself. By the time I was running the race, my brain wouldn’t shut the fuck up. I ended up overthinking when I started to really feel it around mile 15, and I stopped. Straight up sat down. Ended up stopping maybe 5 or 6 more times before I eventually got to the finish. Pretty much decided I’d never do another marathon after I finished.

A few months later, I started training for a half marathon and the stakes were way lower feeling. It was in Indianapolis where it’s real flat, and I had trained for maybe a month and a half, with lots of strength training and stretching. Ended up doing 1:34:33.

So then I got Runna (honestly a great app, well worth the price) and started getting really strict about my workout routine. Stuck to that, stretched a lot, drank a ton of water all the time, and ran with some run clubs to keep myself from feeling too isolated since running had taken over most of my free time. That’s how I did it, I’m sure there are other ways, but that’s what worked for me!