Last Saturday I increased my long run to 8 miles, woot woot! Most of the time I get nervous the night before a long run because I'm worried about not finishing or something like that. Friday night was totally different. I wasn't concerned and I was confident, in fact I was so sure that I'd PR all of my times, from my one mile to my 10K. My 6.5 mile run was great so adding another mile and a half shouldn't be so bad, or so I thought. So if I was so sure of myself, how did it go you ask? Horrible actually. The first mile I was feeling good, my timing was good and I had a good rhythm going. By mile 3 I was tired, at mile 4 I was so ready to be done. About mile 6 is when I started walking more then what my intervals called for. I'd skip a run here and there or just walk through it. Mile 8 I pretty much walked the whole thing. I was so, so tired, my legs were sore, it was hot, even my arms hurt! I still can't figure that one out... Anyways, I made it home in 1:54:09 (and I did PR my 5k time by 23 seconds), well under my 2 hour time goal so I was happy about that but as soon as I walked into my garage and peeled off my hydration pack and other gear, I started crying. That run was hard and it pushed me, I mean it really pushed me. I think that if I had to go any farther I would have walked the rest of it.
Once I got home and changed and had turned into my zombie self that accompanies a long run, I talked with a good friend who is a veteran marathoner. He gave me some good advice and lots of encouragement, just what I needed. I shifted my focus from how tired I was and how bad I thought the whole run was to the fact that I finished and then moved on to try and figure out if there was anything that I could have done differently to make this run better next time. Maybe not eat that chocolate cake the night before (My rationale? I'm carb loading for my run tomorrow!) Maybe I didn't get enough sleep the night before, or it could have been something as "small" that I increased my run interval by 5 seconds and decreased my walk by 5 seconds. Who knows? But I do know that while those 8 miles were hard, I'm going to keep on going. I'm not going to let one bad run rule the rest of my training. I know I'll continue to have bad runs every once in a while but I also know that I'm going to have a whole lot more good runs!
Happy Running!
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