Boiling a Frog

There's a story that says that if you want to boil a frog, you should put it in cool water and then slowly raise the heat. Apparently, if you drop a frog in hot water, it will just jump out. The point of the story is that frogs (and people, I suppose) can get acclimated to things when change is gradual, but react sharply to drastic, severe changes.

The principle could apply to a number of thing in life (for instance, as I write this, my mind is running off on a tangent about politicians and how they treat the average citizen), but I've been thinking about this story lately because I came up with the bright idea a couple of months ago to train for a marathon.

Most marathon training programs require the runner to do one "long run" each week (or every other week as you get into longer distances). In my case, I went from 6 miles to 8 to 10 to 12 and finally to 14 miles. This means I've successfully run my first half marathon (13.1 miles) and I'm just a little over half way to a full marathon. After a two week break from my last long run, I'm up for a 16 mile run on Saturday. It sure doesn't seem like 16 miles should be much worse than 14, but just like the frog, at some point you realize that you're boiling. I'm hoping that I don't hit my boiling point at 16 or 18 or 20 miles (my longest scheduled training run).

I won't ever run more than 20 miles until the day of the marathon. Conventional wisdom says that if you can go 20, then you should be able to handle "just another 6 miles." At the 20 mile mark, most runners also hit "the wall," which makes me think that maybe those last 6 miles aren't going to be as easy as they're supposed to be.

So this Saturday I'll turn the heat up a notch, and we'll have to see how it goes from there.