How to be discouraging

Someone has told me the same story about three times. Normally this wouldn't bother me that much cause I can fake a laugh with the best of them. But here's the story....

"Yea...one of my friends decided he'd do a marathon so he just went out and did one without training. I think it took him like 6 hours or something ridiculous!"

As I mentioned, this person said this about three different times just to drive the point home.

Why is this discouraging? Two reasons...
1. The person didn't train.

I'm spending hours and I mean HOURS of my life training for this stupid marathon. Not just running hours, but preparation hours. It's ruining my Friday nights (not that my Friday nights are all that spectacular to begin with) as I spend the evening resting and preparing for the next morning's torturous hours on my feet. Not to mention the hours of sleep every morning I give up as I get up at the butt crack of dawn (a loving term I learned early in life) to run 4, 8, or 9 miles before work.

To say "he wanted to do a marathon so he just went out a did one" says "why are you bothering training, just go out and do one!"

2. The proclamation that 6 hours is a ridiculous time.

I'm slow. My half marathon PR is 3:01:22 (recently I knocked that pesky 1:22 off of there, but I don't think it's official since it wasn't in a race). This means, at my best, I'll finish a marathon in 6:02:44. Proclaiming that time as ridiculous is...well...utterly ridiculous. In fact, my goal is to simply finish before they close the finish line. In Chicago this means within six hours and thirty minutes. I'm actually HIGHLY concerned that that won't happen.

So to say "6 hours or something ridiculous" says to me, "if you can't do better than that, why are you even trying?"

To be fair, my friend wasn't trying to communicate discouraging words, but wanted to be a part of a conversation. Marathons are one of those things that most people have stories, but few have personal stories. And, I'm frankly a lot discouraged at myself and a lot on edge with this whole thing! Yesterday I was running with one of my friends and a car nearly hit us (well her). My first statement after dodging it was "if they're gonna hit me, hit me hard so I don't have to do this anymore!" That sums up my basic thoughts at this point of training. I REALLY want this to be over! I REALLY wish I hadn't registered.

I REALLY want to quite.