DNF

Did Not Finish. These three words have started to form in my head over the past two weeks.

Last weekend, while running in Philly in 95-degree heat, I had to start walking half way through my run. I had used all my energy trying to get through the hot parts of the city, so I couldn't make it through the shady park areas I has left for the end. Instead of a 15-mile run, it turned out to be an 11-mile run and a 4-mile walk. The heat competely got to me...and there are NO water fountains in Philly (I ran past a total of three). On top of that I had forgotten to charge my iPod the night before, so I only had 40 minutes of battery to use--which I saved for the end...maybe not the smartest move.

Yesterday, I ran 16 miles back here in New York. It was much better than the run in Philly. The weather yesterday was beautiful: cool and breezy, more like an early autumn day than the balmy mid-summer days we've been having.

I was going great through Central Park, then Morningside Park, and even through the hills of Riverside Drive--I was cruising. It didn't get hard until I hit the West Side Highway. I hate running along that path. It is the worst 4-mile stretch of Manhattan possible: it's long and straight, and there is absolutely no coverage from the sun. And by this point, the sun was high in sky, and the temps were probably in the 80s. I made it through all four miles running, but I was in bad shape by the end of it.

I only had four miles left, but in my mental map I might as well have been running to Canada. So I started walking for 1-minute and running for four. It was the one of the old tricks I used to use on myself in order to build up mileage back when I first started running. Back then, 5-miles was a long run, so I hadn't successfully used this technique in years. But it worked. It worked pretty well. I finished only about eight minutes over my target time.

But back to the DNF. So in the past two weeks I've had one bad long run, one kinda successfully long run, and the runs in-between those have been just OK. So my main thoughts now are:

1. Marathon training indeed is a different beast than half-marathon training (yes, I knew this going in, but now I really know it since I'm in the thick of it)
2. My training schedule may be too hard for a first time marathoner
3. What are the 1,000 ways DNF can appear next to my name in Baltimore?

The last thought is scaring the bejesus out of me and, right now, I feel powerless to do anything about it. This is new territory for me. I wasn't even this scared for my first Half-Marathon. And the worst part is that the fear is completely unfounded. Yesterday I did 16 miles in 2:27. If I did that on race day and walked/jogged the rest of the way, I would still finish it in about 5 hours. Which isn't too bad for a first timer.

Ugh. I don't like this part one bit.