Week 16 – 12 miles.

Today, or I guess really earlier this week, marks the beginning of “Tapering” during the training schedule, which to me means three things:

1. The hardest part is over!

2. It’s all downhill from here!

3. Race day is looming closer

It’s also the last run of 2011. I spent it thinking about what I’ve spent most of 2011 thinking about – babies. Only today I was thinking about how I’m going to make it happen instead of being sad about it not happening, which is a  slight change of pace.  Although I chuckle at my “Running is a mental sport and we are all insane” magnet, once thing I’ve discovered this time around is that running really is as much if not more mental than physical. Two weeks ago my heart wasn’t in it, and my time reflected it. Today, I felt good, and my time reflected it, running a full minute per mile faster than the same distance two weeks ago.  All in all though it doesn’t really matter – what matters is that regardless of how tired I was, how unmotivated I felt, I still finished.

Just try to stop me (courtesy of Facebook)

I think the same holds true for battling infertility. Infertiles are marathon runners, just in a different way. (Though, at least the training schedule for running a marathon has a definite start and end time.)

Interestingly, after the run today I met a friend for breakfast, who asked me a very fair question: Why do I feel the need to have children NOW? What is that feeling like?I couldn’t really give her an answer, except to say that once you have the feeling, you will know. But I’ve been thinking about it since then. It’s hard to explain something that feels almost instinctual.  It’s almost like meeting the person you know you’re going to marry. You just know. I also can’t explain why its so important that I feel I need to have children right now. By all logic, I’m young enough to wait a year or even two years longer and the effect on my body wouldn’t be all that negative, especially since we know where we stand. It isn’t like 2 years from now we’d be starting from scratch trying to figure out if its going to happen. For whatever reason though, it just feels like something is missing. And, I feel happier and more relieved being proactive lately than just waiting.

Watch out 2012. I don’t stop when I’m tired, I stop when I’m done.