I haven’t lived very long but I think this would be the only dentist appointment that would change my life.

I have scheduled a teeth cleaning appointment with my hygienist/dentist right after I got back from the Great Wall Marathon in late May 2012. During our short chat, I mentioned how I just got back from running a marathon in China and she told me that she was running the marathon relay in July up near Burlington, VT. I had told her I was thinking about running in all 50 states, and she mentioned how this was in VT and I haven’t ran Vermont before.

This got me thinking about whether I could run a marathon only 6 weeks after one of the toughest marathons I’ve done so far. I looked around online after I got home and saw that there were some training programs for running multiple marathons. The key was that it revolves around recovery and performance retention, rather than improve on my marathon performance. I used these online plans and created my own short program to get me ready for marathon #4 in Waitsfield, VT. I will cover this on my next post.

I had another appointment a few weeks later as I was getting a small enamel filling for the tops of my teeth. This is where I told my dentist I would be running the full marathon in July. She thought I was absolutely insane as she couldn’t fathom running a marathon, let alone running two within two months.