Three weeks to go

I can hardly believe there are only 3 weeks to go until the marathon...time flies! Although I wouldn't have said that during my 18 mile run this morning...it felt like forever! I am super proud of myself for making it and not dying; at the end I actually felt like I could keep going...weird. Either that means my training has been successful, or I just haven't hit the wall yet. I was tired, but I don't think I actually hit the wall. I was doing everything I could think of to sustain myself: extra gatorade, started drinking earlier in the run and had two gels, the first at mile 8 and the second at mile 14. Those energy gel things are pretty gross but I think they really help. Even if they only make me feel better and the energy is all in my head...then they helped. I think next week I may even try stashing more than one gatorade...(I drive down to the far away parts of my route the night befor a long run and hide a gatorade in the bushes). I always feel like a shady character doing it, but oh well. Probably worse is when there are people around when I go to dig it out..."that girl just got a gatorade out of the bushes...".
I decided today that I needed to revisit my original goal of running a marathon: finishing the marathon. That's it. Nothing else. I think I've been getting too caught up in beating the clock and focusing on miles per minute, etc and it actually drags me down. If I don't reach the pace goal that I've set for myself then I feel like I've failed. There should be no room for that...I just ran 18 miles! It doesn't matter that it took a long time, I still did it. No failure in that.
This past week of training has been kind of a challenge for me: I started a new job on Monday morning, so I don't have nearly the same amount of free time I had before. And I'm exhausted. I can't bring myself to wake up early enough to do the runs in the morning before work, so I'm trying to do them in the evening, before it gets dark. Last week that didn't go so well...I come home so starving hungry that when it's dinnertime I EAT. Then I have to wait at least an hour to go running...and by then it's starting to get dark...then two hours later...it's too dark. So I'll have to work on perfecting that this week.
Speaking of eating...this is getting ridiculous. I'm ready for this to be over so I can go back to eating like a normal person. I burned around 7200 calories this morning. I know that only happens one day a week...but during the other runs I burn about 2000 and 3200 calories...depending on the day. No wonder I eat like a HORSE. It didn't sound like much to me until I compared it to what I would normally eat...whoa. So on top of trying to make up for what I've burned, I have to eat like a normal person, and that equals a lot of food. During these high-mileage weeks I've really been packing it in. My book says that from here on out I need to focus more on nutrition and hydration to keep everything stalked up for race day. No gaining or losing weight...just keep it steady. I can hardly wait to start tapering, only 1 more week!
Cumulative mileage total: 260.5