Marathon training starts soon (next week, ack!) and I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do differently this training cycle. I ran my first marathon last December and it was hard. Really, really hard. I ran my second marathon six weeks later and it wasn’t so hard. Physically demanding? Definitely. Mentally though, I was in a much better place. I knew I could cover the distance and I knew that not hitting an arbitrary time goal that I came up with wouldn’t kill me.