I agree with this. After I had 4 or 5 half marathons under my belt and learned a lot more about running, I came to believe that I could finish a marathon. However, long training runs for half marathons made me question if I actually wanted to run a marathon.
2018 San Francisco Giant Race. My first non runDisney event, so I knew I had a good chance at a PR. Training went fine, but a variety of life circumstances piled up especially in the last 2 weeks before the race leaving me both mentally and physically spent on race day. I ended up having to death march the race over the last 10 miles or so. Still got that PR, but felt like I had failed for a few days afterwards.
I suppose you could say I have a 2 part plan to avenge that race. Part 1 came at the WDW Marathon/Dopey. Mostly because I came to realize that my failures at the Giant Race became invaluable preparation for my first marathon. It exposed a lot of little things that I had been doing for years in half marathons that could have been disastrous in the marathon.
Very true. There's so much more I can learn, but I have come to believe that when you accept the learning curve and the patience that comes with figuring it out, you can have much more enjoyable races.
I struggle to balance the reality of this belief with my wondering if I can get better.
And now we come to part 2 of my above mentioned plan. I'm running the Giant Race this year and hope to have the race I dreamed of this time around through applying all the lessons I learned from last year. Then again, I also signed up for the Giant Race 5K that starts at 11:00am since it comes with a shiny new challenge medal if you finish both races, so maybe I'll need to conserve for that race.
Those are cool. Congratulations!