Marathoners are a Nuisance!

This post was originally going to be a Friday Five a few months ago, but I put it in my back pocket for a while.  Suddenly, my last Wednesday before the Marine Corps Marathon, the Wednesday Word pops up as nuisance and it became the perfect time to post!  So here are the five people I have annoyed the most with almost a year's worth of blathering on about running my first marathon!

5. Puppy

Yes, my dog.  This poor pup has had two giant puppy earfuls of marathon talk almost every single day since last December when I decided I was probably going to try running one this year.  You might think the dog doesn't know what I'm saying, but my Kaalia is smart and I swear she understands every word I say.  That's why she tries to squirm away when I start telling her how nervous I am for my long run or how excited I am for the crowds or when I start tearing up while I'm scrolling through the MCM Facebook page at night.  She's probably even more annoyed when I pull her back into a tight "you're stuck listening to this" hug...

4. Dad

Originally I thought my dad would end up at the top of this list, but he's dodged a pretty big bullet by jumping into the deep end of going back to school.  If he weren't hiding in the library all the time, he'd probably be much higher.  On the other hand, prattling on about my training runs and shoving my Map My Run data in his face when he's trying to study probably could make up the difference...

3. Coworkers

This is probably 50-50, since my full time work as a race manager kinda means everyone should be used to race talk by now.  A couple of my fellow managers are runners as well, so they are a little more understanding of the whole mental and physical process and I try to keep my marathon talk limited to those people.  That still leaves about half the office of non-runners who are probably getting tired of hearing "oof, I have a long run this afternoon after we finish working" or "ugh I'm soooo sore from my 20 miler last night" both in the office or at our weekend events...

2. Boyfriend

Bless his heart; my boyfriend has dealt with my incessant marathon focus more than almost anyone.  Half of my training runs (including my first true long run) start and end at his place, so he gets the full brunt of my post-run crazy.  He's patient and encouraging, though, and helps me recover when I'm hurting (even if it means holding me down in the ice bath while I cry and scream about getting frostbite).  He's believed in me from the start, and while his constant harping on my admittedly pretty awful diet can sometimes get annoying, I guarantee I'm far more obnoxious about all this than he'll ever be.  Someone once told me "if you're still in a relationship at the end of marathon training, you're not training right", but I believe my boyfriend's infinite patience and support has pretty solidly stomped that to pieces...

1. Mom

My boyfriend gets a lot of marathon rambling, but no one gets more of it than my mom.  I talk incessantly about training when I'm home, AND I call her after races and training runs that aren't around the house, AND I call when I'm trying to figure out what I should do for different training problems.  She's been sick of marathon talk since probably, oh, April?  When I found out I got in to MCM?  But she's still driving me all the way out to DC, spending the whole weekend there supporting me, and doing her best to encourage me all along the way.  I can't really blame her for getting glassy-eyed when I launch into another analysis of my most recent run or a one-sided discussion about whether I should do my training run in the rain or wait until morning and hope it's drier.  Gonna have to find some way to make it up to her after the race, maybe moving out will be a nice little gift..?

"Oh no, she's gonna start talking about running again..."

As always, the Wednesday Word is hosted by Deb Runs!  Check out the linkup, visit some other bloggers to hear what they consider to be a nuisance, and share what annoys YOU in the comments below!  Thanks for stopping by!