There is a point at which the length of your long workouts in marathon training will become somewhat ridiculous. For me, that point is 18 miles, which takes me about 4 hours. Four hours is long enough to watch ANY Oscar-winning film with time to spare. It is long enough to start at a reasonably early morning hour and finish in the damn afternoon, making you switch your greetings from "morning" to "hi." It is a long. Time.
You might be asking yourself, "how am I supposed to get motivated to do such a ridiculous thing?" The answer: stop overthinking it. Honestly, "stop thinking so much" is the cornerstone of my personal training sessions. I tell all my clients to stop thinking so much and just DO IT. This is a real problem with intellectual types. There is a reason "dumb jock" is a stereotype. We have no time for crazy behaviors such as thinking! We are too busy doing! Busy for four hours!
This is not to say that you should not be prepared. Oh yes, you must be prepared. And you must be aware while you are out there. Prepare by packing up and bringing what you need. Prepare by using your Vaseline and getting your clothes on point and all the other tips I've shared before. Be aware on your chosen route so that you do not get murdered and/or die.
Here is what I do for my 18-mile workouts. I do pretty much the same thing I do for 14- and 16-miles. I bring 24 oz of Powerade or Gatorade, which I water down along the way when I stop at drinking fountains. I will probably be fine with my watered-down Powerade all the way through my training (I will max out at 22 miles since this ain't my first rodeo...if it was, 20 miles would do just fine). I bring nothing else. You may want to bring chewable Pepto, since this is the one thing I WOULD bring if I had pockets, since I inevitably feel like dry-heaving somewhere around mile 15.
At some point during your workout, you may feel like you are simply staggering along, your hips tightened up by some invisible bastard with a wrench, staring down the barrel of a few more miles of misery. Keep in mind that THIS IS THE POINT. The more workouts you have where you end up with tight hips and low back pain that makes you feel like you have added decades to your age, the stronger you will be next week. Seriously. This is training. You are literally training your body to handle this. If your body cannot handle it this week...great! That is the whole, entire point of this otherwise pointless endeavor! As long as you complete the miles, there is no such thing as a bad long workout. Let me repeat in all caps: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BAD LONG WORKOUT. The name of the game is putting miles on your feet. Even if the whole thing falls apart, so what? Did you really think you'd get faster every single week? That's not possible. We walkers all have a terminal velocity.
Some weeks will go badly, meaning you will be in pain, you will be two hours in and looking ahead to another two hours and thinking "where the hell am I gonna find this?" Here's a secret, gang. This is the part of the long workout that is less obvious. The mental training. You need to trust your body. Stop thinking. Start doing. Your legs can carry you because you have trained them to. Your brain can go as long as your legs can. Think positive thoughts. If your workout is a disaster, tell yourself "dang, I am going to be so much stronger next week because of this." If your workout is amazing, revel in it, because everything has come together. Your hard work, over the course of four hours every weekend, will reap whatever you sow. So sow your asses off! FOUR HOURS.
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