Tomorrow I am going to pay

The nice thing about plans is: they often feel very pleasing until reality gets in the way.

Earlier this year, I started outlining which running events I wanted to participate in and sign up for. After all, I still need that extra external motivation to train regularly. The first run on the list was a 10k in Munich, followed by ramping up my training to run 20k in Frankfurt tomorrow. It sounded like a good plan to kickstart my running in 2024 and seemed quite feasible.

Depending on how well I perform, I also plan to decide whether to stick to my original plan to run my first marathon next year or attempt it this year. I am fully aware that I may be overambitious. It is the same tempting logic that led me to run a half-marathon. Two years ago, after my first 10k race, fueled by the accomplishment, I started using 'runner’s math': Running a half-marathon shouldn't be that hard—it's just two 10k runs back-to-back. And what is a 10k if not merely two 5k runs? With regular training, that shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve, right? Somehow, I actually proved that logic correct and ran my first half-marathon earlier than planned.

After successfully applying that logic to a second half-marathon, I started thinking: A marathon is basically just two half-marathons, which are basically just a few 10k runs. This is the method of mathematical induction applied to running and thus must work by definition…

Looking at the past few weeks and how many training runs I've skipped, I feel I should stick to my original plan and debut in the marathon in 2025. It seems like the smarter choice. Sometimes it's better to trust your gut feeling rather than 'runner’s math' logic.

As for tomorrow, it would probably be wise to run just one round of 10k instead of doing the second loop for a total of 20km. But I have a feeling I won't be doing the smart thing on Sunday and will pay the price for those skipped runs.