For the novice runner, I'd say to give yourself at least 2 months of consistently running several times a week at a conversational pace before deciding whether you want to stick with it. Consistency is the most important aspect of training at this point.
Experience has taught me how important it is to just keep going, focusing on running fast and relaxed. Eventually it passes and the flow returns. It's part of racing.
The marathon is all about energy management. I had planned to run it like a track race with strategic surges to blow up my competitors by putting them into oxygen debt, so that is the way I prepared.
There's obviously some validity to it. But I think it also points out that you obviously can do it on your own because people have been doing it long before they had the stuff.
The potential elite runner must realize that hard means hard, easy means easy and they must patiently seek out what combinations work for them. They have to learn to be persistent and patient with their training and racing.
When you are caring about your children perhaps you always have to remember at what point you can become over involved because of something you need rather than something the child needs.
The irony of that is, what makes it kind of ironic, is when you do become successful as a professional athlete in particular, a lot of the young children who are emulating these stars do have a different perspective.
