Finding My Confidence, Part 1

Marathon training started out like gangbusters.  For four weeks, I got in all my miles, all my speed workouts (even those dreaded Yasso 800s), and all my long runs (including a great 10 miler).  Then things fell apart.  I’m not sure what happened.  I missed a long run (beer was involved).  I missed a mid-distance run (beer was again involved).  I went on vacation.  I was busy at work getting ready for a trial.  Before I knew it, two weeks had gone by, I’d hardly run any miles, and I all but forgot what a long run entailed.

I was mad at myself, but I was also starting to get worried.  I’m trying to run a marathon.  This isn’t something I can just half-ass for the next few weeks and then wake up on November 3 expecting to run 26.2 miles.  I don’t want to be miserable, and I don’t want to be out there for five hours.  Despite my fears, I still couldn’t find the motivation to get back on schedule.

I had expected lots of running while I was in San Francisco.  In spite of (or maybe because of) the hills, it’s one of my favorite places to run.  There’s nothing like running along the Bay, through the Presidio, and over to the Golden Gate Bridge.  I’d been looking forward to doing that again since the last time I did it in April of 2011.  It was going to be thirty+ degrees cooler than home, and I was anxious for a fast pace.  We were there for a week.  We ran twice.  I don’t know what happened.  Our first run was great – it was cool; we were fast.  Then it was like some weird depression fog came over me.

We got home on a Wednesday (after 24 hours of being in airports and flying), and upon arrival were greeted by near-triple digit temps and humidity.  That fog followed me home, settled in, and I swear it started talking to me.  “You missed your long run.  It’s already Wednesday afternoon.  You aren’t going to run today.  You’ll never get  your miles in.  You can’t run five days in a row after missing so much time.  Just sit on the couch until next week.”  Not only did I listen, but I bought into it, too.

The weekend rolled around, and still exhausted from “sleeping” on an airplane, I chose sleep over running.  Knowing that I needed to be up by 6:30 in order to accomplish any decent mileage, I repeatedly hit the snooze button until I turned off the alarm.  When I peeked at the clock again, it was 8:45.  Game over.

I wanted to believe that I could just start fresh on Monday.  Just put the past few weeks behind me and start over.  I had a tough speed workout on the calendar and a 12 mile run to try to make up for the missed distance.  If I could get through it all, I would consider myself to be back on track.  The catch was that I was going to be out of town Monday and Tuesday for the trial.  Travel, stress, anxiety, and final preparations were going to make morning runs impossible.  Illinois was just has hot as Indiana.  Did I have it in myself to go out and run in the heat of the late afternoon?

I wasn’t sure, even though I knew if I didn’t get my sh*t together, it would be time to start thinking about changing my entry to the half.

Curious to find out what happens?  Come back tomorrow for Part 2!

I’m Going To Be A Marathoner

Source: monumentalmarathon.com

The first time I participated in a 5K, one of my friends tried to get me to run with the chipped runners.  She told me I only had to run a 9 minute pace.  I looked at her like she was crazy.  It was 2006 (I think) and still a few years before I would start seriously running.  I asked her if she’d ever run the Mini (as it was just a couple of weeks away from this 5K), although as I think about it, I have no idea why running a 5K at a 9 minute pace equated to running a half marathon.  Regardless, her response was, yes, many times, and a number of marathons.  I again looked at her like she was crazy, thinking to myself that running a marathon sounded like one of the most horrible things you could ever voluntarily do to yourself.  Then I asked her how long a marathon was, and almost died.

Now here I am, a little over six years later, getting ready to engage in an activity that I once thought sounded like torture.  I no longer think it sounds like torture, but I am still a bit nervous.  Mostly, though, I’m really freaking excited.

After my first half marathon, I thought that would be the longest distance I would run.  It was doable.  I was content to keep running half marys.  I’m not sure exactly what changed or when, but after a year or so, a full didn’t seem so daunting.  I entertained thoughts of doing one the fall of 2011.  Then I ran my worst race to date – the 2011 Mini.  I went out way too fast, and I hit a wall at mile 9.  I spent the last three miles telling myself I was never running another race again, I might not even run again, and I was never doing a full.  Ever.  Never ever.  Fall training season came around, and between an injury and the still-fresh agony of the Mini, I sat out the season.

As any runner who has vowed to quit running knows, my threats were hollow, and after a few months I was back at it.  I started training for another half, still unsure about whether to tackle a full.  Then the hamstring pain flared up, and I really didn’t know what to do.  To top it off, I couldn’t find a training program that I liked.  In fact, I was still on the fence until last Saturday, when I finally registered for the Monumental Marathon on the last day to get the early bird rate.

So far the hamstring pain has been tolerable, and the program that I stitched together from four or so other programs has been serving me well.  I finally splurged and bought a Garmin.  It has been a great asset for my speed workouts.

I know that there are still 17 weeks of training, and I’ve yet to run a run a distance I’ve never run before, but I’m looking forward to this process.  I think I will learn a lot about myself.  I’ve already learned that while I really hate getting up early, I really hate running in 90+ degree weather more.  If you had told me even six months ago that I would be willingly running between 5:45 and 7:45 in the morning five days a week in order to avoid the sun and heat of the afternoon, I would have said you were nuts.  But here I am, doing exactly that with very little complaining.

My main goals are to stay healthy and injury-free, have fun, and cross the finish line on November 3.  I’ll be sharing the journey with you here.  For those of you also training for a marathon, or thinking about running one, I leave you with this thought, sent to me by one of my good friends:

Running With Dogs

We own a couple of pretty neurotic hyper dogs.  We know that exercise will help them behave better.  We talk about it all the time.  “We really need to get a pass to the dog park.” “We should really start walking them more.” “We should try running with them.”  Yet every week passes and we do none of those things.

They have really been atrocious the last few weeks.  They try to “protect” us from everything that goes by the front window, including other dogs, cats, squirrels, and the occasional piece of trash floating by (you know how dangerous trash can be).  As Spring nears and the temperature rises, we again discussed getting them outside.

Pete loves to walk.  He prances around with this big grin on his face.  Maggie, on the other hand, is so embarrassing.  She barks the entire time, but not normal barking.  Oh, no. That would be too easy.  No, she uses her high-pitched, shrill, “everyone look, my mommy is killing me” bark.  I know that it must echo for a five block radius.  She walks on her back legs.  She dives at the ground and rolls around to try to get the Gentle Leader off her face.  And she foams at the mouth.  That’s right.  It looks like she has rabies (or what I imagine a dog who has rabies to look like).  When we get home, her eyes are all bloodshot from tugging so hard, even though the Leader goes around her nose.

She’s such an anxious dog, she just doesn’t enjoy walking.  But we feel bad leaving her home if we take Pete.  We’ve talked about running with Pete ever since we got him.  He’s fast, and he’s strong.  We figured he could handle a few miles.  Maggie, maybe not so much. She’s also fast (not as fast as he is), but she always acts like she is dying after a mile long walk.  We get home and she huffs and puffs and lays around for the rest of the evening.  That is, after she drinks too much water too quickly and vomits everywhere.

We talked about it last night and decided we would just go for it this morning.  We were only running 4 miles and we could drop them off after two.  There is no excuse for us not getting them out.  I mean, how selfish are we that we run 20-30 miles a week but can’t take the dogs out?  We are bad dog parents.

We got up this morning and got ourselves ready.  There was no real game plan.  I decided I would take Maggie, even though the last time we ran together (over two years ago), she knocked me over and I fell flat on my face.  Since Pete is faster, I figured he would be a better fit with my husband.  We got them all harnessed up and we were ready to go.

We’d barely left the driveway and Maggie was already weaving back and forth in front of me.  I finally got her situated on my left side.  Pete took off like he always does, ears flapping in the wind, huge grin on his face. (For those of you who don’t think dogs smile, I can assure you that they do).  Maggie was yipping like she normally does, but not as loudly.  She decided to run along the sidewalk while I stayed in the street.  We hadn’t even made it two blocks when we came upon a dog in a yard.  He sort of growled at us. Oh, no, I thought.  Here we go.

Maggie did not even notice him.  No acknowledgement.  She just kept right on running.  I was stunned.  If we had been walking, she would have lunged at the dog, choked herself, and barked for the next three blocks.  I was beginning to think this just might work.

Around a half a mile, Pete and my husband were pulling ahead of us.  Maggie looked up and saw them and tried to speed ahead.  It was really pretty cute.  Unfortunately, I could not run that fast.  It already seemed like we were sprinting.  We took a short walking break around a mile.  We couldn’t believe how well everyone was doing.  Except for the humans, anyway.  The dogs were running about 20-30 seconds per mile faster than we usually run.  It was a good thing we planned to drop them off after only 2 miles.

At about a mile and half, Pete saw some squirrels he really wanted to go after.  Maggie saw him, and decided she better go after the squirrels too.  We made it past without anyone getting hurt (me included). When we were almost home, Maggie decided it was now time to dive into vegetation and try to get the Leader off.  We had a couple of instances were she ran on one side of a post and I ran on the other, and we bounced back at the end of the leash.  Again, everyone stayed upright.

As we neared our street, I tried to pick up the pace so Maggie and Pete could finish together.  I was pretty impressed with their athletic skills.  We dropped them off and headed back out for the last two miles, discussing how well that went considering what our walks are usually like.  Maggie didn’t have time to be anxious, and may have actually enjoyed herself.  There was never a question about Pete.  Now we have no excuses for not exercising them.  They can come with us on our runs, and I think as time goes by, they will be able to go farther.  Which will be a good thing, considering they weren’t even tired the rest of the day! (What we were hoping for, but did not achieve) ————–>