Track and Field Blogs - Dot McMahan

I’m nearly 7 weeks into Olympic Trials marathon training with five more to go. Workouts are going great. However, I’m taking recovery days easy, out of necessity. I’ll hit about 115 miles for this week. Hungry? Tired? Sore? Winter blues? YES, all of the above. Spring is around the corner though and soon enough I’ll be running in shorts again!

After the Houston half marathon in January, our coaches decided on target times and workout paces for each of us. Mine is definitely aggressive, yet achievable. It is a nice change from Chicago’s “safe” marathon training (meaning “let’s just get a Trials qualifier”). And Boston last year wasn’t a fair assessment because race day conditions weren’t good.

Overall, I’m keyed up for the Trials; and not only for myself, but for my teammates too. Four of us have been together for two years, or more. None of us had run a marathon before joining the team. Now we’ve been through some ups and downs and have grown together during our journey to the Olympic Trials. I am just as excited to see what I can do, on race day, as I am to see how they’ll do. For me, I believe doing this as a part of a team means so much more than if I would have been doing this all on my own.